303 Quotes About Idealism

My generation failed to change the world, but at least I did not let the world change me.

That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.

It is easier to believe in the ideal than it is to achieve it, but it is impossible to achieve the ideal if one does not believe in it.

In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force

Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment.

We are reformers in the spring, but iin autumn we stand by the old. Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's hard to renounce heroes unless you have one to start with.

The world is a collective dream, and we are its dreamers, hence we can change it – if we all cooperate. Nothing is more important than the realization that we can literally alter “material” reality with our minds, but we have to collaborate or we can achieve nothing. Just as the individual mind can change an individual dream effortlessly, the collective mind can effortlessly the change the collective dream, but only if minds are indeed working collectively, with common, directed intent.

What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday.