Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ideals Quotes

Ideals Quotes

Browse 2903 quotes about Ideals.

Related topics

MenIfsWorldPeopleThinkingHumansWayShouldKnowsMayWantWould BeMeanRealIdeasMindStatesTryingRealityArtPersonsNationsWellsHas BeensNeedsSelfFormValuesBelieveDoeLongGivingHighestIdeal WorldFeelsIdealismWritingAmericaKindLooksTwoEndsFactsHeartPerfectCharacterChildrenIndividualCountryDreamMadeDesireGovernmentDemocracyFirstsGoalDifferentPrinciplesWholeYearsLifeSocialLawSeemsMoralCertainHigherMatterMightRealizingSpiritStriveBeautifulLife IsChristianDemocraticPerfectionSoulSpiritualStillsVisionWarBodyHardImportantJusticePoliticalPurposeHomeTogetherAgeCommonCoursesForceFoundHuman BeingsTodayBeliefConditionsInspirationalmore

Ideals Quotes

“Man can never come up to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.”

MenStillsSpiritHigherStandardsIdealsRaisesCome UpImmortalModestWisestGreatest Man
Book:Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke
Create image

“Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.”

KnowsMenWorldFoundLinesSecretConsciousnessCasesFailureHigherTenAchievementIdealsRegardNineEnviedHappiest Man
Book:Writings, 1902-1910
Create image

“The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.”

PeopleGivingWellsSpiritualSpiritNationsAtheismRocksHigherEthicsEvidenceIdealsJewPositive AtheismAspirationSheepTestamentCavesConvincingPaganOld TestamentCattleConvincing Evidence
Author:James T. Shotwell
Create image

“What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.”

LyingDesireNightPassionThreeIndividualMusicConditionsVictoryHigherEternalUniqueIdealsInfinitePossessionTongueCheerCrownsPhasesVulgarLove PassionWorthlessness
Book:Pilgrimage to Beethoven and Other Essays
Create image

“America may not be the best nation on earth, but it has conceived loftier ideals and dreamed higher dreams than any other nation. America is a heterogeneous nation of many different people of different races, religions, and creeds. Should this experiment go forth and prosper, we will have offered humans a new way to look at life; should it fail, we will simply go the way of all failed civilizations.”

PeopleWayShouldHumansLooksMayDifferentDreamEarthAmericaNationsRaceFailingHigherCivilizationIdealsExperimentsBeing The BestCreedsNew WaysDifferent PeoplesDifferent Races
Book:Racism 101
Create image

“There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.”

ThinkingWaySoulCharacterFormCertainCultureHeavenPerfectBeautyMoralMaterialsHigherPeriodsGloryFairsIdealsWeakIntellectFleshEnthusiasmMortalsBurningRangeImmortalBelongingInterfereTypicalVesselIndicationStirringCountenance
Author:John Ruskin
Create image

“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
Create image

“The daily grinding of evolution, as accelerated by technology, churns out more and more complex organisms, with higher rates of energy use, and with increasing specialization. Minds are the ideal way to express complexity, energy density, increasing specialization, expanding diversity -- all in one system. Mindedness is what evolution produces. Mindedness is what technology wants, too.”

WayWantMindUseEnergyTechnologyProduceEvolutionHigherDiversityIdealsComplexesRateComplexityOrganismsExpandingDensitySpecializationEnergy Use
Author:Kevin Kelly
Create image

“From our best qualities come our worst. From our urge to pull together comes our tendency to tear each other apart. From our devotion to a higher good comes our propensity to the foulest atrocities. From our commitment to ideals comes our excuse to hate. Since the beginning of history, we have been blinded by evil's ability to don a selfless disguise. We have failed to see that our finest qualities often lead us to the actions we most abhor, murder, torture, genocide and war.”

Has BeensWarActionTogetherHateEvilAbilityQualityWorstTearsHigherCommitmentIdealsMurderExcuseDevotionTendenciesTortureUrgesGenocideSelflessDisguiseFinestAtrocitiesBlindedPropensity
Author:Howard Bloom
Create image

“The various forms of education or ‘normalization’ imposed upon an individual consist in making him or her change points of subjectification, always moving towards a higher, nobler one in closer conformity with the supposed ideal. Then from the point of subjectification issues a subject of enunciation, as a function of a mental reality determined by that point. Then from the subject of enunciation issues a subject of the statement, in other words, a subject bound to statements in conformity with a dominant reality”

RealityMovingFormIndividualIssuesSubjectsHigherIdealsFunctionBoundsVariousDeterminedStatementsConformityDominantAlways Moving
Author:Gilles Deleuze
Create image

“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be...gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier...it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book.”

IfsThinkingWayBookShowsEyeUniverseCan DoFictionWonderStepsSawsPiecesReaderHigherDegreesIdealsMy WayHis EyesBeneficialWay Of ThinkingCleanersNature Beauty
Book:The Essential Gene Stratton-Porter Collection
Create image

“Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing'... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either.”

NeedsMeanOrderGoalCan DoRichHigherAchievementIdealsFinalsAccomplishmentItalianDoing NothingPray LoveEat Pray Love BookBest Eat Pray Love
Book:Eat Pray Love 10th-Anniversary Edition: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Create image

“It is something great and greatening to cherish an ideal; to act in the light of truth that is far-away and far above; to set aside the near advantage, the momentary pleasure; the snatching of seeming good to self; and to act for remoter ends, for higher good, and for interests other than our own.”

EndsSelfLightInterestPleasureHigherAdvantageIdealsCherishFar AwaySeemingMomentary
Book:Bayonet! Forward: my Civil War reminiscences
Create image

“I have problems with a religion which says that faith in itself is enough for a ticket to heaven. In other words, that the ideal is your ability to manipulate your own common sense to accept something your intellect rejects. It's the same model of intellectual submission that dictatorships have used throughout time, the concept of a higher reasoning without any obligation to discharge the burden of proof.”

EnoughProblemUsedHeavenAbilityCommonAcceptingHigherIntellectualModelsConceptsIdealsBurdenIntellectProofObligationCommon SenseReasoningRejectsDictatorshipTicketsSubmissionManipulateDischargeBurden Of Proof
Author:Jo Nesbo
Create image

“All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.”

PastScienceCausesEnvironmentEffectsTaughtHigherLessonsIdealsFactorsRevolutionaryTaught UsGuisePast ExperiencesProbable Cause
Book:Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays
Create image

“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.”

MenHeartHas BeensStillsAbleChristianJesusGivenChristChristianityVirtueHigherJesus ChristIdealsSubtletyBrothers Karamazov
Book:The Brothers Karamazov (English Russian Edition illustrated): Братья Карамазовы (англо-русская редакция иллюстрированная)
Create image

“The preservation of the Jew was certainly not casual. He has endured through the power of a certain ideal, based on the recognition of a Higher Power in human affairs. Time after time in his history, moreover, he has been saved from disaster in a manner, which cannot be described excepting as 'providential.' The author has deliberately attempted to write this book in a secular spirit; he does not think that his readers can fail to see in it, on every page, a higher immanence”

ThinkingWritingHumansDoeHas BeensBookSpiritCertainFailingReaderHigherPagesIdealsAffairJewSavedDisasterRecognitionSecularPreservationJudaismCasualHigher Power
Book:A Bird's-eye View of Jewish History
Create image

“Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him embrace a higher working goal-a standard, an ideal-and he will do his own 'making over' far more effectively than you can do it for him.”

PeopleIfsKnowsMenWantTryingPersonsHelpingGoalCan DoInspiringHigherStandardsIdealsEmbraceFaultsEvery ManReformImperfectYou Can Do It
Author:David Packard
Create image