The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.
We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.
As I have pointed out it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
Idealism is the despot of thought just as politics is the despot of will.
At present our country needs women's idealism and determination perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
In a weird kind of way music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.
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.
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.
Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts patriotism idealism a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.
By concentrating on what is good in people by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice and by asking them to put their faith in the future socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace no less than war requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.
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.
Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.
I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism more humanness more compassion more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.
Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case it is usually at the expense of others. In other words it is the opposite of idealism.
What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then like any great place it collapsed and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.
All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture) the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism idealism and fantasy.