Quotes about Ideals

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.

Show me the business man or institution not guided by sentiment and service; by the idea that "he profits most who serves best" and I will show you a man or an outfit that is dead or dying.

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

Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods—Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ.  When the Renaissance dawned upon the world, and brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of living, men could not understand Christ. 

Ideals are dangerous things.  Realities are better.  They wound

We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to offer. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, and bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have all been flown for religious ideals.

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? I

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

One of the great strengths of the United States is... we have a very large Christian population - we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

The only people who aren't hypocrites are those whose morals are so twisted, whose consciences are so seared, that they don't believe in any ideals higher than those they actually live out.

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.