A genius is a grown-up that did not grow up.

Countless generations have set out convinced that they would succeed where other had failed – that’s where lawyers and reporters come from, you know. They’re the cynical corpses of idealistic young people who thought the...

In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist’s life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal...

I lost something magical in the process of growing up – my disillusionment.

You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in…it’s actually kind of...

It’s always the lesser of two evils.”I don’t see why there have to be any evils at all.’-Connor

I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.

Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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...

I prefer true over happy now.

He wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.

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...

The scene [Bruegel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm,...

Realism arises from the maturity of the minds, while Idealism arises from their conformity.

Mothers do not have love affairs. Before their children they have dreams, and after their children they have delusions. If the father is involved somewhere, they have fantasies.

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain...

the real is coherent and probable because it is real, and not real because it is coherent…

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...

If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part...

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles...

People change, though, especially after they are dead.

She had dealt with her pregnancy by wrapping herself in dreams.

Let’s always try to paint the truth … our art must be made to mean something.

Modern man, brought up on Kantian idealism, regards nature as being no more than an outcome of the laws of the mind. Losing all their independence as divine works, things gravitate henceforth round human thought,...

Nice people don’t necessarily fall in love with nice people.

You’re the medium Weed and I use to communicate, that’s all, this set of holes, pleasantly framed, this little femme scampering back and forth with scented messages tucked in her little secret places.”She was too...

Are we truly committed to the notion that ideals and values vary and alter in accordance with changing conditions? Should we not question such a relativistic dogma? Is not the degree of our sensitivity to...

I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones...

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe...

The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given...

Sometimes it’s best to trade an ideal for something more practical that you can guarantee.

As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young...

We human beings glimpse lofty ideals, catch ourselves betraying them, and sink to suicidal despair–despair from which only the love of our friends can save us, since friends see in us those nobler qualities we...

I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are...

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: “He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.

Idealists and reformers all become executioners in their turn. The road to utopia ends with the steps of the scaffold, the endless moment of the guillotine.

The more idealism proves futile, the more I respect idealists.

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.

History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.

Sometimes it’s only the young ones who are crazy enough to change the world.

Imagine there’s no countriesIt isn’t hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I’m a dreamerBut I’m not the only oneI hope someday...

Blogging, writing conventional articles, and being science consultant and pocket protector ninja to various web portals and TV programs, quite often trying to promote the penicillin of hard data to people who had no interest...

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

Being Jewish did not compromise the humanitarian and universalist ideals of my close relatives who, having experienced persecution close hand, were more concerned with bringing about peace, justice and equality in the world than in...

If Feingold does it, if he wins this race in this year, it will not be as just another Democratic senator. It will not be as a maverick, nor even as an idealist. It will...

I prefer truth-based entertaining idealism.

This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.

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...

People don’t want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you’re a teacher you’re in a constant battle with mildly...