Most idealists lived in their own impossible worlds…

When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.

— Don DeLillo

“Idealists are either blind or clowns; because they think it is possible to have a beautiful world with asshole creatures like humans.”

— M.F. Moonzajer

“Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of…

— T. Lothrop Stoddard

What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which…

— David James Duncan

“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…

— John Lanchester

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

— Alain de Botton

“Reality is what people who lack vision see.”

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the…

— Henry A. Kissinger

“Those who maintain that mind is the reality and matter an evil dream are called "idealists"—a word which has a different meaning in philosophy…

— Bertrand Russell

Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.

— Lorraine Hansberry

Neither idealists nor materialists are right; we must take both idea and expression.

— Swami Vivekananda

“Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you…

— David Foster Wallace

Teachers are by nature idealists, and they believe anything can be learned.

— Susan Wiggs