The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be 'materialistic' and 'greedy' to want to keep what you have earned. But it is 'idealistic' to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.
— Thomas Sowell
Fantastic Idealistic quotations
The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
To sleep around is absolutely wrong for a woman;
it's degrading and it completely ruins her personality. Sooner or later it will destroy all that is feminine and beautiful and idealistic in her.
Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.
For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other's good intentions.
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.
It is the decisive people who have become civilised;
it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.
I don't believe in superheroes but I love Batman movies.
There's a part of every person that is entertained by the idealistic, the fantastic.
Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well.
Being idealistic really helps you overcome some of the many obstacles put in your path.
I'm idealistic so my life outlook is to never give up.
Even if something seems absolutely impossible, I will run as hard as I can go.
Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself.
Which is more remarkable fact about America: that millionaires are idealists or idealists become millionaires.
Idealists, workers of thought, unite to show how inspiration and genius walk in step with the progress of the machine, of aircraft, of industry, of trade, of the sciences, of electricity.
The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.
So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social justice' is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity.
The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.
Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.
Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic.
It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.
If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely.
We believe that if the world doesn't go quickly to an end, it will be only because Hitlerism transformed itself into a new religious faith, able to change the materialistic man of today into a new idealistic hero where the 'beyond life' is as important as life itself.
War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count.
A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.
I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
I'm not an idealist anymore, I'm a bitter realist.
Children are great idealists, until the stupidity of their elders puts out the fires of the aspirations.