Don't part company with your ideals. They are anchors in a storm.--Arnold Glasgow

Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.--Robert F. Kennedy

Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.--Israel Zangwill (Address, Nov. 13, 1892)

First, when everybody tells you that you are being idealistic or impractical, consider the possibility that everybody could be wrong about what is right for you. Look inside yourself the way nobody else can. Will the pursuit of your dream hurt anybody? Do you stand at least a fair chance of success? If you fail, will you be seriously damaged or merely embarrassed? If you succeed, will it change your life for the better? When you can persuade yourself that your dream is worthwhile and achievable--then you say thank you to the doubters and take the plunge … How much better to know that we have dared to live our dreams than to live our lives in a lethargy of regret.--Gilbert E. Kaplan

Heads are wisest when they are cool and hearts are strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals.--Ralph Bunche (in Forbes Magazine, 23 Jan 1989)

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. …The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.--Albert Einstein ("What I Believe" Forum and Century)

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.--Anne Frank

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.--Jacques Barzun (The House of Intellect)

Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.--Walter Lippmann (A Preface to Morality)

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

The image is made to order, tailored to us. An ideal, on the hand, has a claim on us. It does not serve us, we serve it. If we have trouble striding toward it, we assume the matter is with us, and not the ideal.--Daniel J. Boorstin (The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America)

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit, divorced from it, they remain barren.--Bertrand Russell (Mysticism and Logic)

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.--Bertrand Russell ("The Liberation of Women" Marriage and Morals)

No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her won way is without enemies.--Daisy Bates

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

No vision and you perish;
No Ideal, and you're lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.
Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high.--Harriet Du Autermont

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.--Douglas MacArthur

An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.--Felix Adler

Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it; nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.--Victor Hugo

Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one's ideal.--Anna Pavlova

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.--Sir William Osler

To live and let live, without clamour for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine live; to write truth first on the table of one's own heart--this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.--Mary Baker Eddy

We come to think of an idealist as one who seeks to realize what is not in fact realizable. But, it is necessary to insist, to have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals, however often it may be the case that our ideals are impracticable.--L. Susan Stebbing (Ideals and Illusions)

What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood.--Os Guinness (The Call)

When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination.--Ellen Key

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.--Herbert Hoover 

The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals.--Sydney J. Harris

You always need to make ideals clear to yourself. You always have to be aware of them, even if there is no direct path to their realization. Were there no ideals, there would be no hope whatsoever. Then everything would be hopelessness, darkness--a blind alley.--Dr. Andrei Sakharov