Albert Einstein:

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

Aldous Huxley:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Arnold Toynbee:

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

Bertrand Russell:

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

adapted

Bill Moyers:

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

Carl Schurz:

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 resemble the stars, which illuminate the night. No one will ever be able to touch them. But the men who, like the sailors on the ocean, take them for guides, will undoubtedly reach their goal.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Don Quixote:

Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Dorothy Thompson:

The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.

Edwin Markham:

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.

Epictetus:

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Eugene V. Debs:

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

1908 speech

Eugene V. Debs:

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

George Bernard Shaw:

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"

frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.

George Santayana:

An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.

The Life of Reason, 1905-1906

Gloria Steinem:

We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.

Gustave Flaubert:

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Harold Nicolson:

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.

Hasidic saying:

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Henry David Thoreau:

If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau:

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Henry David Thoreau:

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Isaac Asimov:

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

John Dewey:

The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value.

John F. Kennedy:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

John Lennon:

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one.

Jonathan Kozol:

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

On Being a Teacher, 1981

Leo Buscaglia:

Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.

Marian Wright Edelman:

My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

Marian Wright Edelman:

I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.

Marian Wright Edelman:

It's time for greatness -- not for greed. It's a time for idealism -- not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.

Marian Wright Edelman:

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

Marian Wright Edelman:

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Maxine Hong Kingston:

To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world -- that I am able to change it in positive ways.

Michelangelo:

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Norbert Capek:

It is worthwhile to live
and fight courageously
for sacred ideals.

This entry continued ...

Oscar Wilde:

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Patricia Hampl:

The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

Pearl S. Buck:

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

Princess Diana:

Only do what your heart tells you.

Rabbi Zusya:

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Each man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Theodore Roosevelt:

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.

Thomas Jefferson:

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Victor Frankl:

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

Victor Frankl:

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.

William Ellery Channing:

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

William Menninger:

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.

Zora Neale Hurston:

I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.

(1942)