Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny. ~Carl Schurz
Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices. ~George Bernard Shaw
Some people never have anything except ideals. ~E.W. Howe
When a man forgets his ideals he may hope for happiness, but not till then. ~John Oliver Hobbes
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong. ~G.K. Chesterton
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. ~Norman Douglas, South Wind
We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts. ~Harold Nicolson
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem. ~John Galsworthy
Materialism is a circumference without a centre. Idealism is a centre without a circumference. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. ~David T. Wolf
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals. ~G.K. Chesterton
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. ~Henry L. Mencken
Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal. ~Israel Zangwill
