#idealism

Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification. ↗

— Harold Edmund Stearns

#adventure #america #civilization #desertion #emigration

Any idealism is a proper subject for art. ↗

— Lafcadio Hearn

#art #idealism #proper #proper subject #subject

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. ↗

— Emir Kusturica

#any #art #awful #central #century

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. ↗

— Carl Jung

#alcohol #bad #every #form #idealism

Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism. ↗

— Claude McKay

#based #castle #foundation #idealism #like

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that. ↗

— Richard M. Nixon

#believe #desert #freedom #garden #guts

This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view. ↗

— Josiah Royce

#although #attain #berkeley #described #familiar

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

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism. ↗

— John Buchanan Robinson

#antithesis #brief #egoism #idealism #interpretation

It is instructive, for instance, to trace the computer industry's decline in vision, idealism, creativity, romance and sheer fun as it becomes more and more important and prosperous. ↗

— Robert Shea

#computer #creativity #decline #fun #idealism