Ideals Quotes

“I have my own ideas, plans and ideals, but am unable to articulate them yet.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer.

Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better.

From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

“Don’t fool yourself with destructive ideals cloaked in clever justifications or soothingly wrapped in smooth verbiage. For in the end, these are not the things that fool you. Rather, it is the fact that you’ve granted them permission to fool you.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The real slavery of to-day is slavery to ideals of virtue.”
― George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism

“What glitters, lives but for the moment; what has real worth, survives for all posterity.”
― Goethe, Faust

“Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves—a self in which she proudly professed the great principles of democracy and a self in which she sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice, to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.

The step backward has a new name today. It is called the “white backlash.” But the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of Black Power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation. The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that have always characterized white America on the question of race.

What is the source of this perennial indecision and vacillation? It lies in the “congenital deformity” of racism that has crippled the nation from its inception. The roots of racism are very deep in America. Historically it was so acceptable in the national life that today it still only lightly burdens the conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Unshackled freedom’ did not mean doing whatever a person felt like without outside interference. To take up the reins of freedom, it was necessary to respect the rule of law and to cooperate. Otherwise, a person could cry ‘freedom’ until he was blue in the face and his ideals would remain idle visions.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger

“Toprağınız toprağım, eviniz evim; burası için, bu diyarın çocukları için bir ana, bir ışık olacağım ve hiçbir şeyden korkmayacağım; vallahi ve billahi!”
― Halide Edib Adıvar, Vurun Kahpeye

“[...], their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on specific grievances.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Chivalry is first and foremost the worldview of fighting men, and I am convinced that the decline of the gentlemanly ideal has occurred at least in part because men really are flabby—physically and spiritually.”
― Brad Miner, The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry

“To be honest, your ideals are worth shit if it doesn't benefit the many.”
― Gideon Omoruyi

“To make the people happy, lash them with guns.
The great words are empty, the high-sounding ones,
Fraternity, Justice, the Mission of France,
Liberty, Progress, Human Rights, Tolerance;
Socrates was mad; read Lelut and learn;
Christ, demagogue with a socialist turn,
Is much over-rated; the cannon is God,
Paixhans is its prophet; Earth, throw up your sod!
Man's ultimate aim is to learn how to kill.
The sword is the way to keep the people still.”
― Victor Hugo

“It is essential that we always repeat:
we the people,
we the people,
we the people.”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“The true character of a person lays in their willingness to face the gravest of moments, and in those moments to turn the best of their ideals into the most sacrificial of actions.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“You will never find the perfect job, relationship, or situation. Nothing is perfect. Our ideals in life are set by others, and it’s these set of standards they’ll want you to live by. Never live by standards set by others. Set out of your own path until you run into happiness. No matter what job, relationship, or situation. Happiness is the foundations that make all things possible.”
― Ron Baratono

“Voting reflects your personal ideals.”
― Steven Magee

“In this world, there is only one happiness and that is to be yourself. And because nobody is himself, everybody is trying somehow to hide, with masks, with pretensions and with hypocrisy.  They are being taught everything in the education system, but they are not taught to be themselves.  This is what makes everybody miserable. To be what you do not want to be, to do something that you do not want to do. These things are the basis of all
misery. Sooner or later, you have to decide. You have to say: Whatever the cost, I want to be myself. Condemned, ridiculed, losing respectability, everything is ok, but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else.
This decision and declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd of people, gives back your natural being. Then you can simply be yourself just as you are.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heart 

“[...] estamos casi poseídos por los más nobles ideales, pero sólo con la condición de que se realicen solos, de que aparezcan sobre la mesa como caídos del cielo y, lo más importante, que sean gratis, gratis, que no haya que pagar por ellos. No nos gusta nada pagar, pero sí nos gusta mucho cobrar, y así con todo.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Omul este fiinta care aspira catre Arta prin vis. Unica si ultima lui implinire este aceea de a i se permite sa traiasca in launtrul propriului sau vis. (...) Insa exista si foarte multi oameni care nu-si pot gasi pacea niciodata. Visul lor personal este tulbure, plin de teroare, de resentiment fata de ceilalti ori fata de ei insisi. A-i face sa traiasca intr-o asemenea realitate ar echivala, pentru ei, cu o condamnare la pedepsele infernului. Un infern pe care fiecare il duce cu sine oriunde se invarte. Prin Arta, ei pot fi salvati de infern, dar nu vor cunoaste niciodata adevarul. De aceea trebuie lasati sa traiasca in interiorul lumii. Lumea insasi a fost intotdeauna si a ramas o fictiune a Artei, aparuta ca sa-i salveze intr-un fel pe condamnatii la infernul personal. Din cand in cand, prin moarte, acestia se recufunda in ei insisi, iar Arta, rabdatoare, ii aduce inapoi.”
― Ioan Petru Culianu, Hesperus

“The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we love.”
― Victor Hugo

“All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”
― Herman Hesse

“Therefore Whitman failed radically in his dearest ambition: he can never be a poet of the people. For the people, like the early races whose poetry was ideal, are natural believers in perfection. They have no doubts about the absolute desirability of wealth and learning and power, none about the worth of pure goodness and pure love. Their chosen poets, if they have any, will he always those who have known how to paint these ideals in lively even if in gaudy colours. Nothing is farther from the common people than the corrupt desire to be primitive. They instinctively look toward a more exalted life, which they imagine to be full of distinction and pleasure, and the idea of that brighter existence fills them with hope or with envy or with humble admiration.

If the people are ever won over to hostility to such ideals, it is only because they are cheated by demagogues who tell them that if all the flowers of civilization were destroyed its fruits would become more abundant. A greater share of happiness, people think, would fall to their lot could they destroy everything beyond their own possible possessions. But they are made thus envious and ignoble only by a deception: what they really desire is an ideal good for themselves which they are told they may secure by depriving others of their preeminence. Their hope is always to enjoy perfect satisfaction themselves; and therefore a poet who loves the picturesque aspects of labour and vagrancy will hardly be the poet of the poor. He may have described their figure and occupation, in neither of which they are much interested; he will not have read their souls. They will prefer to him any sentimental story-teller, any sensational dramatist any moralizing poet; for they are hero-worshippers by temperament, and are too wise or too unfortunate to be much enamoured of themselves or of the conditions of their existence.”
― George Santayana

“Maybe then I would submit to it's rigid ideals if I were recognized as worthy of experiencing them.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“And he said...

...clothes may dress a man, but not his ideals.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“The completion of the anticipated is often anticlimactic disillusionment, cruel and harsh. Thus, ideals are good as long as they are unattainable, even though we swear we will attain them.”
― Gordon Roddick, 1963

“What I like about ideals is that they want to be hot and passionate and appear nonsensical to the sensible man.”
― Gordon Roddick, 1963

“Ideals should be believed, loved and held above all else.”
― Gordon Roddick, 1963

“The attainment of ideals is the attainment of perfection, and pure perfection is imperfection since it can only be boring and undesirable. If one could attain the perfection of one's own ideals, it would be just the same.”
― Gordon Roddick, 1963

“Self-sufficiency and self-reliance are classic American ideals.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, Reclaiming Femininity: Saving Women's Traditions & Our Future

“Father sat in his easy chair, occasionally shaking his head and saying how this was just the way the cycle worked—one time they vote for what they believe themselves to be and the next they get angry and vote for what they really are.”
― Omar El Akkad, A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers