The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or...

To put a dreamer in their place isn’t dreaming.

Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never...

Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or to an idea...

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.’Risa closes her eyes. She...

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Bravery usually looked stupid from the outside.

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn’t met yet who would ask...

Because if we were all created idealists, then life was bound to be one relentless disappointment. But then, there was also music. We unlearned the lies with one hand and repeated them with the other.

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life.

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

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...

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.