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Ideals Quotes

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Ideals Quotes

“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”

MenMindDoeMadeNationsCausesLeadershipOpinionInfluenceArmsIdealsBlowAriseBitterCompromiseDesertIsolationMidstDespisePublic OpinionDoing NothingStand AloneHarnessCollisionGreat Influence
Author:Woodrow Wilson
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“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain't-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on--our lost narcissism lives on--in our ego ideal.”

GivingSelfWholeDreamRealityMightFacesLostGoalLossPerfectMoralVisionGrowing UpWonderfulChildhoodEgoGiving UpMajorsStandardsIdealsPerfectionEthicalPortionsNarcissismCompellingFinestOur DreamsLimitlessInfantile
Book:Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex
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“The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.”

RealFactsLyingPovertyEmotionalIntellectualWeaknessIdealsEnglandCourtCoastCreepsIncompleteLanesDrunkennessArmament
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)
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“... ideals, standards, aspirations,--those are chameleon words, and take color from their speakers,--often false tints. A scholarly man of my acquaintance once told me that he traveled a thousand miles into the desert to get away from the word uplift, and it was the first word he heard after he reached his destination.”

MenFirstsHeardColorThousandStandardsIdealsMilesUpliftingDesertAspirationGet AwayDestinationSpeakersTraveledAcquaintanceThousand MilesChameleonScholarly
Book:The Rest of My Life
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“The measure discriminates definitely against products which make up what has been universally considered a program of safe farming. The bill upholds as ideals of American farming the men who grow cotton, corn, rice, swine, tobacco, or wheat and nothing else. These are to be given special favors at the expense of the farmer who has toiled for years to build up a constructive farming enterprise to include a variety of crops and livestock.”

MenYearsHas BeensGivenGrowsSpecialHe ManProductsSafeIdealsProgramBillsFavorsVarietyEnterpriseExpensesFarmersAgricultureFarmingCornConstructiveCropsRiceTobaccoWheatCottonSwineLivestock
Author:Calvin Coolidge
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“The romantic temper, so often and so grievously misinterpreted and not more by others than by its own, is an insecure, unsatisfied, and impatient temper which sees no fit abode here for its ideals and chooses therefore to behold them under insensible figures. As a result of this choice it comes to disregard certain limitations. Its figures are blown to wild adventures, lacking the gravity of solid bodies, and the mind that has conceived them ends by disowning them.”

MindEndsBodyCertainChoicesResultsFiguresAdventureFitIdealsLimitationTemperGravityLackingInsecureAestheticsImpatientRomanticismDisregardAbodeUnsatisfiedInsensibleMisinterpretedDisowning
Author:James Joyce
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“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”

TryingDoeArtStillsStatesPoliticalArtistTurnsSocialModernIdealsConstitutionReformDescriptionWorks Of ArtDreamerIdealismDefectsGreat WorkPosterityShamefulTriumphantProdigiesChimera
Book:Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition
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“Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our own peculiar political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal of universal equality and their grind-stone experience of the practical misery and infamy of poverty.”

FirstsMayLittlesPoliticalSocialPrinciplesPovertyAcceptanceOffersIdealsDignityStonesUniversalMiseryCharityAppreciationPracticalsMinistersDistinctionReliefPeculiarUnfortunateSensibilityProsperousGrindAffluenceWretchednessInfamy
Book:The Encantadas and Other Stories
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“The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before.... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood.”

YearsStatesGirlWorkReadyActivityCapableHundredIdealsWomanhoodEarnestDescendantsDreamySturdyHampshireNew Hampshire
Author:Lucy Larcom
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“In my public statements I have earnestly urged that there rested upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral and spiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in elections has produced a keener realization of the importance of these questions and has contributed to higher national ideals. Moreover, it is through them that our national ideals are ingrained in our children.”

PeopleChildrenGovernmentPoliticsWomenResponsibilityMoralHigherIdealsImportanceOur ChildrenElectionStatementsRealizationWelfareParticipation
Author:Herbert Hoover
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“But I would emphasize again that social and economic solutions, as such, will not avail to satisfy the aspirations of the people unless they conform with the traditions of our race, deeply grooved in their sentiments through a century and a half of struggle for ideals of life that are rooted in religion and fed from purely spiritual springs.”

PeopleSpiritualSocialRaceHalfStruggleEconomicCenturySpringSolutionsIdealsTraditionAspirationFedsSentimentsRootedConform
Book:Herbert Hoover: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President
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“With a full century of contrary proof in our possession and despite our demonstrated capacity for cooperative teamwork, some among us seem to accept the shibboleth of an unbridgeable gap between those who hire and those who are employed. We miserably fail to challenge the lie that what is good for management is necessarily bad for labor; that for one side to profit, the other must be depressed. Such distorted doctrine is false and foreign to the American scene where common ideals and purpose permit us a common approach toward the common good.”

SeemsLyingPurposeSidesChallengesCommonAcceptingFailingCenturySceneApproachCapacityIdealsLaborManagementProfitPossessionProofContraryDoctrineDespiteGapsTeamworkPermitEmployedEmployersCommon GoodCooperatives
Author:Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth.”

MayTruthBeliefVirtueTruth IsLimitsEssentialsIdealsEndlessStatementsAbstractIngredientsConfessionInvestigation
Author:Charles Sanders Peirce
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“During adolescence imagination is boundless. The urge toward self-perfection is at its peak. And with all their self- absorption and personalized dreams of glory, youth are in pursuit of something larger than personal passions, some values or ideals to which they might attach their imaginations.”

SelfDreamMightValuesPassionImaginationYouthGloryIdealsPerfectionPursuitUrgesAdolescenceBoundlessAbsorptionSelf AbsorptionPersonalizedSelf Perfection
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“Though they themselves might be as surprised as their parents and teachers to hear it said, adolescents--these poignantly thin- skinned and vulnerable, passionate and impulsive, starkly sexual and monstrously self-absorbed creatures--are, in fact, avid seekers of moral authenticity. They wish above all to achieve some realistic power over the real world in which they live while at the same time remaining true to their values and ideals.”

WorldSaidRealSelfFactsMightValuesWishParentMoralTeacherAchieveCreaturesIdealsPassionateAuthenticityVulnerableRealisticReal WorldAdolescenceSeekersImpulsiveSelf AbsorbedAvidParents And Teachers
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“The most significant change wrought by adolescence is the taming of the ideals by which a person measures himself. . . . Love of oneself becomes love of the species. Conscience is pointed to the future, whispering permission to reach beyond the safety net of our ordinary and finite human existence.”

HumansPersonsExistenceSelf LoveFutureOrdinaryConscienceIdealsSafetySpeciesOneselfSignificantPermissionAdolescenceFiniteHuman ExistenceWhisperingSafety NetTamingSignificant Change
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“The purpose of adolescence is to revise the past, not to obliterate it. . . . Adolescence entails the deployment of family passions to the passions and ideals that bind individuals to new family units, to their communities, to the species, to nature, to the cosmos. Therefore, given half a chance, the revolution at issue in adolescence becomes a revolution of transformation, not of annihilation.”

PastPurposePassionIndividualGivenCommunityChanceHalfIssuesRevolutionIdealsTransformationSpeciesCosmosAdolescenceUnitsAnnihilationDeploymentFamily UnitNew Family
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“In all times and in all places--in Constantinople, northwestern Zambia, Victorian England, Sparta, Arabia, . . . medieval France,Babylonia, . . . Carthage, Mahenjo-Daro, Patagonia, Kyushu, . . . Dresden--the time span between childhood and adulthood, however fleeting or prolonged, has been associated with the acquisition of virtue as it is differently defined in each society. A child may be good and morally obedient, but only in the process of arriving at womanhood or manhood does a human being become capable of virtue--that is, the qualities of mind and body that realize society's ideals.”

MindHumansMayChildrenDoeHas BeensBodyProcessRealizingHuman BeingsQualityVirtueChildhoodCapableIdealsEnglandBe GoodAll TimeDefinedFranceAdulthoodWomanhoodManhoodFleetingMind And BodyMedievalAcquisitionObedientArabiaArrivingVictorianDresdenSpartaPatagoniaNorthwesternConstantinopleCarthageZambia
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.”

PeopleBelieveMeanSelfEyeFormPurposeSpeakPowerfulReadyCommunicationConversationSpeechIdealsLettersMethodLipsAppearanceRevealingNapsUneasyUnrealityDeterrentCharmers
Book:The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
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“As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes--and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away.”

MenMayPersonsHas BeensMadeRealGuyHumanityFatherPracticeSacrificeHe ManHeroIdealsMalesSakeMythInvisibleBossAncestorMasculinityRidiculeMasculineRivalsBuddyOther GuysComradeChorusReal Person
Author:Frank Pittman
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“The unique eludes us; yet we remain faithful to the ideal of it; and in spite of sense and of our merely abstract thinking, it becomes for us the most real thing in the actual world, although for us it is the elusive goal of an infinite quest.”

ThinkingWorldRealGoalUniqueIdealsInfiniteIndividualityFaithfulAbstractSpiteQuestsReal ThingsElusiveEludeElude UsAbstract Thinking
Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown
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“The attempt to be an ideal parent, that is, to behave correctly toward the child, to raise her correctly, not to give to little ortoo much, is in essence an attempt to be the ideal child--well behaved and dutiful--of one's own parents. But as a result of these efforts the needs of the child go unnoticed. I cannot listen to my child with empathy if I am inwardly preoccupied with being a good mother; I cannot be open to what she is telling me.”

IfsNeedsGivingWellsChildrenLittlesMotherParentResultsEffortEmpathyIdealsEssenceRaisesMy ChildrenBehaveUnnoticedGood MotherBeing A Good Mother
Author:Alice Miller
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“Every epoch which seeks renewal first projects its ideal into a human form. In order to comprehend its own essence tangibly, the spirit of the time chooses a human being as its prototype and raising this single individual, often one upon whom it has chanced to come, far beyond his measure, the spirit enthuses itself for its own enthusiasm.”

FirstsHumansFormSpiritOrderIndividualChangeHuman BeingsHistoryProjectsIdealsEssenceEnthusiasmRenewalEpochHuman FormPrototype
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us--through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.”

IfsMenHumansMeanPersonsHas BeensMadeTwoSelfMomentsHuman BeingsCompassionFeetChildhoodWillingAdultsIdealsClaimsLaysRaisedCommitWitnessAdolescenceCompetenceInfancySelf MadeSelf Made Man
Author:Urie Bronfenbrenner
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“For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness.... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well.”

PeopleMenWantBelieveWellsMayMadeRealSelfMatterDoneHomeForgetViolenceWorstExampleHonorBedConversationIllusionIdealsNo Matter WhatWingsStrikesDamageTexasSubmitCowboyScornForget ItMillionaireRight WingRedneckReal MenSelf MadeOutspokenManlinessMachismoNortherners
Author:Edmund White
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“With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”

ShouldHumansSoulReasonEnoughHomeSchoolLawSpecialFieldsActivityIdealsMethodFeministMotherhoodAcceptedReason WhyGenerousBarriersNo ReasonWomens RightsLegislationHuman ActivityEndowment
Book:Crystal Eastman on women and revolution
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“We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest--blank; and the world tells uswhat we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says--Work; and to us it says--Seem! To you it says--As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labour is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says--Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labour. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women.”

MenWorldHumansHeartMeanLittlesEndsHelpingSeemsDesireStrongForceNaturalArmsShapesHighestMen And WomenGainsIdealsLabourPlasticBlankHuman HeartHearts Desire
Book:The Story of an African Farm: A Novel
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