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Idealism Quotes

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Idealism Quotes

“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 of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.”

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Book:Pragmatism and Other Writings
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“She gasped. “You know what your problem is? You don’t take yourself… or anything… seriously enough!” She sat rigidly, her teeth and her buttocks clenched tight, nostrils flaring with each impassioned breath, tears burning the back of her eyelids. Was she really having this debate with Bruce Koczynski? A man she believed incapable of these intense opinions and complex ideas? She didn’t even know he had the vocabulary. It was utterly disorienting.”

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Author:M. A. Clarke Scott
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“Curiosity and imaginative power: these two things may give us partial immunity to fanaticism. ... [T]he fanatic is uncomfortable imagining the details of the act he eagerly volunteers to perform. He is comfortable with the slogan, as long as the slogan doesn't translate into shouts, pleas, dying gurgles, puddles of blood, brains spilled out on the sidewalk. It is true that there are sadists in the world who would actually be excited by close-up pictures of abuse and dismemberment, but most fanatics are not driven by sadism but by lofty ideals, a longing for redemption and a desire to mend the world, which necessitate 'getting rid of the bad ones.”

ImaginationViolenceEmpathyIdealismExtremismSadismDear Zealot
Book:שלום לקנאים
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“There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say–'My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.”

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Book:Jane Eyre
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“We had quite an argument before she left. Mari just could not let go of her ideal of dedication and saving lives and all that. I told her no one would appreciate her, but she said she didn't care. It angers me to think that some people are taking advantage of her, of her pureness. But you know, in a way I envy her. I envy her for having that much passion left in her. - Akiko”

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Book:Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist
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“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 in being cured of their ignorance.”

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Book:Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Volume 132, Issue 12, December 2012
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“...After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are the moving impulses of our life. But it is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism.”

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Author:Calvin Coolidge
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“Was there nothing left in this world that was worth opening your eyes and fighting for? Would the bad guys always win? Are our efforts to live in peace simply doomed to failure? Will the bad guys always be bad guys? Will the good guys spend their whole lives taking punches and throwing rocks into the water with all of their might and getting nothing more in return than a ridiculous sploosh and the shame of failure?”

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Book:The Laws of the Skies
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“Now that I have overcome so much pain and can read my destiny like a map full of errors, when I feel no pity for myself and can review my existence without sentimentality, because I have found relative peace, I only lament the loss of innocence. I miss the idealism of my youth, of the time when there was still a clear dividing line between good and evil for me and I believed that it was possible to always act in accordance with immovable principles.”

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Book:The Infinite Plan
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“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 knows the dance... 'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.' But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.”

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Book:UnDivided
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“Self-respect is the very cement of character, without which character will not form nor stand; a personal ideal is the only possible foundation for self-respect, without which self-respect degenerates into vanity or conceit, or is lost entirely, its place being taken by worthlessness and the consciousness of worthlessness; and that is the end of all character. It is often said that if we do not respect ourselves no one else will respect us; this is rather a dangerous way to put it; let us rather say that if we are not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the respect of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and never of mere seeming. As Paulsen says, "It is vanity that desires first of all to be seen and admired, and then, if possible, really to be something; whereas proper self esteem desires first of all to be something, and' then, if possible, to have its worth recognized.”

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Author:Edward O. Sisson
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“My ideal was contained within the word beauty, so difficult to define despite all the evidence of our senses. I felt responsible for sustaining and increasing the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, spacious and airy, their streets sprayed with clean water, their inhabitants all human beings whose bodies were neither degraded by marks of misery and servitude nor bloated by vulgar riches; I desired that the schoolboys should recite correctly some useful lessons; that the women presiding in their households should move with maternal dignity, expressing both vigor and calm; that the gymnasiums should be used by youths not unversed in arts and in sports; that the orchards should bear the finest fruits and the fields the richest harvests. I desired that the might and majesty of the Roman Peace should extend to all, insensibly present like the music of the revolving skies; that the most humble traveller might wander from one country, or one continent, to another without vexatious formalities, and without danger, assured everywhere of a minimum of legal protection and culture; that our soldiers should continue their eternal pyrrhic dance on the frontiers; that everything should go smoothly, whether workshops or temples; that the sea should be furrowed by brave ships, and the roads resounding to frequent carriages; that, in a world well ordered, the philosophers should have their place, and the dancers also. This ideal, modest on the whole, would be often enough approached if men would devote to it one part of the energy which they expend on stupid or cruel activities; great good fortune has allowed me a partial realization of my aims during the last quarter of a century. Arrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our time, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient Terpander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strength was the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that whole so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.”

JusticeBeautyStrengthOptimismIdealismHarmony Of The Spheres
Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
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“Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.”

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Book:Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
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“Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.”

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Book:Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
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“Only one number can stake any claim to any special status, and that is zero – the origin – upon which all other numbers depend. It is the perfect balance point of all the other numbers, which is why the monad is the “container” of all other numbers, their source. There it is, slap bang in the middle of the Euler unit circle, controlling all. It’s the SOUL of the circle.”

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Book:The God Equation
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“There are many layers of fear associated with this abandonment: fear of what would happen if the system no longer managed our lives, fear of being devoured by the system ourselves, fear that we cannot win, and perhaps most dauntingly, the fear that we cannot do any better than this, that our hopes to the contrary are the utopian dreams of childish idealists.”

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Book:Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
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“It is a development of history that has transformed the political classes into social classes such that, just as the Christians are equal in heaven yet unequal on earth, so the individual members of a people are equal in the heaven of their political world yet unequal in the earthly existence of society.”

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Book:Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
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“Curing humanity of its madness is the biggest challenge there is. The only remedy is to subject everyone from the day they are born to an educational regime of reason, logic, clear and critical thinking, i.e. Logos thinking, and to teach them to see straight through emotional Mythos and understand it for exactly what it is: emotional lies to seduce, manipulate, exploit and control the gullible masses. The sensory Mythos of scientism is as dangerous as the emotional and mystical Mythos of mainstream religion. Only Logos – rationalism and idealism – can provide Ariadne’s golden thread to lead us out of the labyrinth of the lunatics where the Minotaur of Madness devours everyone ritually offered up to it. It’s time to slay the Minotaur and make humanity sane”

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Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don’t see what use he is.”

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Book:Bouvard and Pécuchet
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“The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve. At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature.”

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Book:Australia: The most godless place under heaven?
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