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
Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices. – George Bernard Shaw
Some people never have anything except ideals. – E.W. Howe
When a man forgets his ideals he may hope for happiness, but not till then. – John Oliver Hobbes
Materialism is a circumference without a centre. Idealism is a centre without a circumference. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals. – G.K. Chesterton
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. – Henry L. Mencken
