#idealism

As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism. ↗

— Christopher Dawson

#base #christian #christian tradition #culture #element

The enemy of idealism is zealotry. ↗

— Neil Kinnock

#idealism

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#criminals #god #good-and-bad #good-and-evil #heaven

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

Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#idealism #love #love-at-first-sight #poetry #romance

It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"! ↗

— Lorraine Hansberry

#idealism #life #realism #change

The reason why we believe that change is possible is not because we are idealists but because we believe we have made it, so other people can make it as well. ↗

— Roméo Dallaire

#optimism #change

For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [...] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#change

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#idealism #idealist #food

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it. ↗

— Michael Polanyi

#tyranny #life