Pastoral Resources

Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism.

But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism.

Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.

Even when Darwin's teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology.

Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

And all this effort, all this loss of comradeship, all this prostitution of idealism and manhood, to assist the capitalists of this country to defeat the proletariat!

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.

Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.