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Idealist: a cynic in the making. -- Irving Layton
I'm an idealist without illusions. -- John F. Kennedy
I am a mixture of idealist and realist. -- Roger Moore
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. -- George Carlin
The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels. -- Malcolm de Chazal
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous. -- Henry Ford
You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot. -- Stanley Kubrick
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. -- Eric Hoffer
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. -- H. L. Mencken
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. -- Woodrow Wilson
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. -- Sydney J. Harris
I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible. -- Todd Gitlin
I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic. -- Studs Terkel
I am an idealist, which can be tiring. -- Hussein Chalayan
Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better. -- Lorraine Hansberry
The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive -- John Zorn
Don't make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I'm not. -- Madeleine Albright
I'm still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive. -- Brit Marling
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way. -- Carl Sandburg
Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. -- Robert Anton Wilson
I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. -- Carl Sandburg
Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world. -- Emma Goldman
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter. -- Logan Pearsall Smith
Any idealist who tries to join the Peace Corps must realize he is not going to change the world overnight. -- Sargent Shriver
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals. -- Bertrand Russell
Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one. -- Honeysuckle Weeks
The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimize themselves in favor of the ideal... But I just can't. You see, my paintings are not cool. -- Agnes Martin
The cynic finds love with the idealist. The rebel with the conformist. The social butterfly with the bookworm. They help each other balance their lives. -- Joyce Brothers
Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist. -- Neil Peart
Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well. -- Jurgen Moltmann
I'm not an idealist. I know we're not going to be living in a world that's peace and love all the time. But we can live in a world where we kill each other a lot less. -- Michael Franti
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. -- Oswald Spengler
If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely. -- Robert Higgs
The idealists dream and the dream is told, and the practical men listen and ponder and bring back the truth and apply it to human life, and progress and growth and higher human ideals come into being and so the world moves ever on. -- Anna Howard Shaw
When I was younger, I was somewhat of an idealist. I guess I'm a little bit more of a realist now. I think there's a lot that can be done to make the world a better place, but it's more about choosing your battles. -- Conor Oberst
Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, 'tough this and tough that.' Then there is this business about 'gooey.' The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist. -- Madeleine Albright
My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense. -- Hugh Jackman
If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you have no heart, but if you are still an idealist by the time you are thirty, you don't have a head. -- Randolph Bourne
I'm a cynical idealist. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The idealist regards facts as provisional. -- Mason Cooley
No one more cynical than an idealist. -- Tanith Lee
An idealist who couldn't cope becomes cynical. -- Amy Ray
A man given to vice is always an idealist. -- Georges Bernanos
People will say I'm an idealist. I hope so. -- A. Bartlett Giamatti
I'm not an idealist anymore, I'm a bitter realist. -- Soe Hok Gie
Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist. -- George Carlin
The only option for a pure idealist is to commit suicide. -- Wu Guoguang
Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist. -- H. L. Mencken
The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love. -- Albert Camus
Nothing was easier to shatter than the fragile shield of an idealist. --
The idealist hopes. The romantic sees doom. The postmodernist sees doom and hopes. -- Bauvard
From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step. -- Friedrich August von Hayek
I have never been an idealist - that implies you aren't going to achieve something. -- Arthur Scargill
Reality will always prevail so why help it? Be an idealist and see what happens. -- Simon Sinek
Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him. -- Woodrow Wilson
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I'm still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people's lives better. -- Charles Schumer
To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There's no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying 'I am an American.' -- Ronald Reagan
She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist. -- Isaac Marion
Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle. -- Hugh Jackman
The true idealist pursues what his heart says is right in a way that his head says will work. -- Richard M. Nixon
The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
The idealist and dreamer will stubbornly go down with the ship. The serial innovator grabs the rudder and changes course. -- Larry Osborne
A strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We come to think of an idealist as one who seeks to realize what is not in fact realizable. But... -- Susan Stebbing
Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision -- Rick Bayan
Im still an idealist. My manager is always trying to talk me out of it, but thats just the way I am. -- Ariel Rechtshaid
Brant's an idealist, and he's competent. There are few more dangerous combinations in this world... Heroes are even more dangerous than idealists. -- Patricia C. Wrede
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup. -- H. L. Mencken
If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway. -- Robert Penn Warren
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork. -- Thomas Merton
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The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people. -- Irving Babbitt
I am a misanthrope and yet utterly benevolent, have more than one screw loose yet am a super-idealist who digests philosophy more efficiently than food. -- Alfred Nobel
Truth, though, is nothing in the face of self-falsehood, and principles are of no value if the idealist cannot live up to his own standards. -- R. A. Salvatore
Wives invariably flourish when deserted; ... it is the deserting male, the reckless idealist rushing about the world seeking a non-existent felicity, who often ends in disaster. -- William McFee
Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well. -- Jurgen Moltmann
How many people in the pews know that [ Jonathan Edwards] is both a founder of evangelicalism and, say, an idealist who denied that the material world exists? -- Oliver D. Crisp
A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned. -- Warren W. Wiersbe
I wince at her use of the word "human." I've never liked that differentiation. She is living and I'm dead, but we're both human. Call me an idealist. -- Isaac Marion
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Shahid was the free spirit of the Kamal family: a dreamer, an idealist, a wanderer on the face of the earth--or, as Ahmed would put it, a lazy fuckwit. -- John Lanchester
I used to think if it wasn't possible to be a family man and a totally dedicated artist, I'd rather be the former. I'm an idealist and a romantic. -- Charlton Heston
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. -- Harper Lee
You'd be a fool or a deluded idealist to think ethics would be prominent on Wall Street. That is not a statement against people in the money business, just a fact. -- Steven Levitt
World unity is the wish of the hopeful, the goal of the idealist and the dream of the romantic. Yet it is folly to the realist and a lie to the innocent. -- Don Williams
I may be a businessman in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I'm an idealist. -- Richard Branson
Now of all the idealist abominations that make society pestiferous I doubt if there be any so mean as that of forcing self-sacrifice on a woman under the pretense that she likes it. -- George Bernard Shaw
A cynic should never marry an idealist. For the cynic, marriage represents the welcome end of romantic life, with all its agony and ecstasy. But for the idealist, it is only the beginning. -- Julie Burchill
For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves. -- Michel Onfray
In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects. -- Jorge Luis Borges
The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimise themselves in favour of the ideal. But I just can't. You see, my paintings are not cool. ... I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate. -- Agnes Martin

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