#Ideals Quotes

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.”

“We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.”

“The roll of honor consists of the names of meant who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.”

“Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people.”

“There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of the people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity.”

“My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, itwill turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedomthat America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”

“This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.”

“The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.”

“There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to and that is the truth of justice, and of liberty, and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to led by itand through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.”

“My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.”

“Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.”

“Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this western world with all those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on sides of the water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action in the main tenets of justice.”

“Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse. Untrammeled reasoning is the indulgence of the philosopher, of the dreamer of sweet dreams.”

“No art can conquer the people alone-the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority.”

“People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible”

“All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.”

“Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.”

“Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.”

“The only way for us to have long-term happiness is to live by our highest ideals.”

“There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.”

“It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.”

“Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life.”

“Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.”

“Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.”

“Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America...”

“A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.”

“Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.”

“Tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new. Built on spirit intent of heart, and ideals based on truth.”

“Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.”

“Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn't that the highest purity?”

“A man's usefulness depends on his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.”

“Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection.A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.”

“It was a pleasure to deal with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything mean and base, and who possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone.”

“The men and women who have the right ideals . . . are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.”

“He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread”

“We shall have to work like lions, keeping the ideal before us, without caring whether "the wise ones praise or blame us".”

“We have all been hearing from childhood of such things as love, peace, charity, equality, and universal brotherhood; but they have become to us mere words without meaning, words which we repeat like parrots, and it has become quite natural for us to do so. We cannot help it.”

“Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.”

“Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.”

“With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.”

“The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.”

“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”

“The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.”

“Don't give up on your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And for heaven's sake . . . don't get cynical.”

“Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.”

“The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.”

“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.”

“We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.”

“The only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals.”