Idealism Quotes
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.-Carl Sandburg
It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts.-Sidney Madwed
Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.-Tacitus
Indolence is the sleep of the mind.-Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues
There is no remedy for time misspent; No healing for the waste of idleness, Whose very languor is a punishment Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.-Sir Aubrey de Vere
Their only labour was to kill the time; And labour dire it is, and weary woe, They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go, Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow.-James Thomson
The hardest work of all is to do nothing.-Proverb
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.-Jerome K. Jerome
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.-H. L. Mencken
A man's real worth is determined by what he does when he has nothing to do.-Megiddo Message
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.-David T. Wolf
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.-Henry Ford
Evil thoughts often come from idleness.-Gaelic Proverb
I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.-Sherlock Holmes
He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.-Marcus Tullius Cicero
How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!-William Cowper
As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.-Samuel Johnson
I don't think necessity is the mother of invention -- invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.-Agatha Christie
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.-Robert Anton Wilson
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.-Hosea Ballou
You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.-Sir James M. Barrie
A nation rushing hastily too and fro, busily employed in idleness.-Phaedrus
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.-Jeremy Collier
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.-Virginia Woolf
In the diligence of his idleness.-Hosea Ballou
That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.-Horace
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time, which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it no small deduction for the life of man.-Robert Burton
An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.-William Cowper
For idleness is an appendix to nobility.-Robert Burton
I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.-Jenny Joseph
Thus idly busy rolls their world away.-Oliver Goldsmith
What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?-John Heywood
I live an idle burden to the ground.-Homer
Busy idleness urges us on.-Horace
Valor, gradually overpowered by the delicious poison of sloth, grows torpid.-Caius Silius Italicus
Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.-Samuel Johnson
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.-Lucanus
The frivolous work of polished idleness. - Sir James Mackintosh,-Sir James Mackintosh
Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves.-Ovid
Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yarn confess The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.-Alexander Pope
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.-Quintilian
A man who has no office to go to--I don't care who he is--is a trial of which you can have no conception.-George Bernard Shaw
Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.-Benjamin Franklin
Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.-George MacDonald
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem. - John Galsworthy
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it. - Alfred North Whitehead
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. - Bertrand Russell
Life without idealism is empty indeed. We must have hope or starve to death. - Pearl S. Buck
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. - William Frank Buckley Jr.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Sir Winston Churchill
Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral. - Richard Milhous Nixon
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will. - Mikhail Bakunin
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously. - Henry Louis Mencken
Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.-Dick Morris
Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.-Sidney Hook
Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.-William Irwin Thompson
Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.-Bill Moyers
If a young person has any idealism at all, it's strongest about the time he finishes college.-Sargent Shriver
If you didn't have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you?-James Carville
If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough - you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.-Richard Stallman
In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.-John Buchanan Robinson
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.-Bertrand Russell
It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.-Morris Raphael Cohen
It is instructive, for instance, to trace the computer industry's decline in vision, idealism, creativity, romance and sheer fun as it becomes more and more important and prosperous.-Robert Shea
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.-H. L. Mencken
It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.-Karl Kraus
Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back.-Don Henley
Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.-Pearl S. Buck
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.-Bertrand Russell
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.-Alfred North Whitehead
Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port.-Rosa Luxemburg
Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.-Anita Roddick
Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.-Germaine Greer