#idealism

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#idealism #maturity #dreams

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

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations. ↗

— Peter M. Senge

#idealism #cynicism

A man is always devoted to something more tangible than a woman - the idea of her. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #idealism #love #men-and-women #funny

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. ↗

— William F. Buckley, Jr.

#become #costs #fine #idealism #prohibitive

I've always wanted to play Don Quixote in some way. It's a great role. I think the idealism of the man shows that hope that we have in the human breast to achieve something. ↗

— Dominic Chianese

#always #don quixote #great #hope #human

One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them. ↗

— Susan Neiman

#beauty #idealism #philosophy #art

Even when Darwin's teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology. ↗

— Trofim Lysenko

#appearance #became #biology #clear #concerning

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

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