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


Reality shouts; ideals whisper. ~Nathaniel LeTonnerre, translated


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


Don't let the alarm clock of life wake you from the dream of your ideals. ~Irisa Hail


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