#idealism

If you didn't have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you? ↗

— James Carville

#sense #some #sustain #then #you

God save me from idealists. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#idealism #thomas-raith #humor

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons. ↗

— Sinclair Lewis

#misanthropy #love

Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#co-dependence #divorce #idealism #idealists #marriage

Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back. ↗

— Don Henley

#blind #hope #idealism #inspire #look

He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that ... being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. ... His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage [of Verdun]. ↗

— Iain Pears

#war #wwi #dreams

See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler. ↗

— William James

#philosophy #pragmatism #rationalism #truth #equality

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#idealism #ideals #politics #pragmatism #faith

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#materialism #nature

Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation. ↗

— Adolf Hitler

#principle #renunciation #sacrifice #spirit #thriving