An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
—Henry Ford
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
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
—Carl Sandburg
Dream in a pragmatic way.
—Aldous Huxley
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
—H. L. Mencken in Minority Report
Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt… Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.
—Robert Anton Wilson
At the boy's level, hero worship gravitates toward the doer of spectacular deeds; on the average adult level, toward the wielder of power; and in the eyes of a more critical judgment, toward idealism and moral qualities.
—Dixon Wecter
Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.
—Paul Eldridge
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts.… To unbind what is bound, to bring the underground waters to the surface: mankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that.
—Albert Schweitzer