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Ideals Quotes

“"There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.”

MindFirstsDoeTwoRealProblemOrderExistenceMistakeConditionsIdealsTestsLogicBasesAbsolutesProfoundQuittingPsychologicalSuitsAssumptionInternalsSpheresFormalStrictNever QuitCorrespondence
Author:George Henry Lewes
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“I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.”

IfsThinkingFeelsTryingI CanTwoFeelingsDifferencesPiecesCuttingIdealsLonelyIncreaseStressIntentionBehaveSplitsProve MyselfBest Intentions
Author:Alan Watts
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“I think I am most fond of the unseen part. I mean that the various cultural experiences that I go through, and the behavioral aspects of getting the work done, are just as important as the installation and the photograph. So, for me, the relationship between the two is more about hybridism and the search for an ideal form that I'm never going to arrive at. The installation and the photograph are mere approximations of this ideal.”

ThinkingMeanTwoImportantDoneFormAspectIdealsMerePhotographVariousUnseenWork DoneApproximationInstallation
Book:Sandy Skoglund: reality under siege : a retrospective
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“Auden, who asked two things of an imagined world-that it be somehow like ours and somehow unlike-would be Ben Marcus's ideal reader, yet even without the poet's dire program, I am altogether taken by this hilarious and sexy alternative universe. Just imagine! it is all done with words instead of mirrors, so much more reliable and so much more heartbreaking. Thus Prospero enthralls his crew.”

WorldTwoDoneWould BeUniverseTakenImaginePoetReaderIdealsProgramMirrorsSexyAlternativesTwo ThingsCrewHeartbreakingAudenProspero
Author:Richard Howard
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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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“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”

IfsThinkingTwoHandsSeemsReligionBeliefDifficultReligiousMoralMagicFieldsExpressionMaterialsHighestIdealsMereSuperstitionsSymbolicCrudeReligious BeliefSuperstitiousCredulity
Book:An essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture
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“Rice and peas fit into that category of dishes where two ordinary foods, combined together, ignite a pleasure far beyond the capacity of either of its parts alone. Like rhubarb and strawberries, apple pie and cheese, roast pork and sage, the two tastes and textures meld together into the sort of subtle transcendental oneness that we once fantasized would be our experience when we finally found the ideal mate.”

TwoWould BeTogetherFoundPleasureFitTasteOrdinaryCapacityIdealsOnenessApplesSubtleCategoriesMatesCheeseDishesPieSageRiceTextureTranscendentalPorkIgniteStrawberriesPeasCookeryApple Pie
Author:John Thorne
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“There are two generic and invariable features that characterize utopias. One is the content: the authors of utopias paint what they consider to be ideal societies; translating this into the language of mathematics, we might say that utopias bear a + sign. The other feature, organically growing out of the content, is to be found in the form: a utopia is always static; it is always descriptive and has no, of almost no, plot dynamics.”

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Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin
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“The ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.”

PeopleChildrenTwoStoriesTogetherDarkRoomsConsciousnessStepsIdealsPairsDark Room
Book:The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses
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“The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two-thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture.”

WayYearsHumansHeartTwoStatesAmericaOrderFoundOpportunityNaturalUnitedUnited StatesGrowing UpDemocracyFiveGrowingEconomicThousandHundredIdealsDemocraticArchitectureUnited States Of AmericaHuman HeartEconomic OrderOrganic Architecture
Author:Frank Lloyd Wright
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“Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.”

TwoLibertyEconomicConditionsIdealsDemocraticClassicLatterFormulasCooperationDeclineInitiativePhasesFraternityLiberty And EqualityDemocratic Ideals
Book:The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939
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“The ideal is unnatural naturalness, or natural unnaturalness. I mean it is a combination of both. I mean here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. Not if you have one to the extreme, you'll be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden, a mechanical man No longer a human being. It is a successful combination of both. That way it is a process of continuing growth.”

IfsMenWayHumansMeanTwoProcessGrowthNaturalHuman BeingsSuccessfulIdealsHarmonyInstinctExtremesCombinationContinuingUnnaturalNatural Instinct
Author:Bruce Lee
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“If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy.”

IfsMenWantDoeSaidTwoWarActionWantedJobsYoungWeekIdealsRiversSlaveryShoesCampaignsYoung ManCivil WarAttachmentSouthernTrafficTwo WeeksMississippiDesertedSturdySteamboats
Author:Hal Holbrook
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“Western progress (from one damned thing to another) seems to be essentially the MO of nowhere fast. But, on the other hand, the don't-set-foot-outside-your-own-village/cave ideal or injunction that you find in Buddhism and even in the Daoism of which I'm fonder, seems . . . defeatist. And more than that, it is in contradiction to what nature actually does. Somewhere, somehow, I feel as if these two opposing principles have to be reconciled.”

IfsFeelsDoeTwoHandsSeemsPrinciplesProgressFeetBuddhismIdealsWesternContradictionVillageCavesOpposing
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
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“I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes . . . it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal--or completely shattered.”

IfsTwoBookSelfCharacterSeemsHateChoicesReaderIdealsPerfectionHatredI HateEndlessBotherDescriptionAttributesShatteredHeroinesSelf HatredTwo Choices
Book:Ruby Oliver 1: The Boyfriend List
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“Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute.”

MenMeanTwoFormSpiritMotherForceDestinyWiseDrawsIdealsLongingEndureContraryBridgesFixedSpiteSuspicionSteppenwolf
Book:Steppenwolf
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“Sure, nothing succeeds like success. Fact is, dearest, we are fools. We cling to an ideal no one wants or cares about. I am the greater fool of the two of us. I go on eating out my heart and poisoning every moment of my life in the attempt to rouse people's sensibilities. At least if I could do it with closed eyes. The irony is I see the futility of my efforts and yet I can't let go.”

PeopleIfsWantHeartI CanTwoMomentsFactsEyeCareEffortGreaterFoolGoes OnMy HeartSucceedLetting GoEatingIdealsIronyIf I CouldSensibilityFutilityPoisoningTwo Of UsClosed EyesCan't Let GoEating Out
Author:Emma Goldman
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“HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, so WHY push to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree is WHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway, WHEN did creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the person WHO lives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you - WHAT is perfect.”

PeopleWantShouldPersonsTwoStatesGoalPerfectCreatingIdealsSkinsAgreeFinishedConcreteFacadeFlawlessIncomparableLearning To Love
Book:Perfect
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“Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.”

TwoFactsLawScienceUniverseLevelsParticularHighestConcernedIdealsConnectionsUltimateAccountsVariousLogicalLowestPropositionsHierarchyFoldsGoverningScientific MethodDeductions
Book:The Scientific Outlook
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“Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.”

WorldTwoHelpingTodayAbleReligionHumanityFallSoundRealizingJusticeDemocracyAtheismStyleConceptsIdealsAll ThingsDemocraticWesternInsightGods WillIdeologyLiberalismAlmightyDemocracies HaveShattering
Author:Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
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“The ordinary patient goes to his doctor because he is in pain or some other discomfort and wants to be comfortable again; he is not in pursuit of the ideal of health in any direct sense. The doctor on the other hand wants to discover the pathological condition and control it if he can. The two are thus to some degree at cross purposes from the first, and unless the affair is brought to an early and happy conclusion this diversion of aims is likely to become more and more serious as the case goes on.”

IfsWantFirstsTwoHandsPainSciencePurposeCasesConditionsSeriousHealthGoes OnDegreesComfortableOrdinaryIdealsCrossesDirectDoctorsAimPatientAffairPursuitConclusionDiscomfortDiversion
Author:Wilfred Trotter
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