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Ideal

principle or value that one actively pursues as an ethical goal

An ideal is a perfect standard of beauty, wisdom, virtue or excellence.

Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists. ~ John Lancaster Spalding
The relation of the true artist and the true human being to his ideals is absolutely religious. The man for whom this inner divine service is the end and occupation of all his life is a priest, and this is how everyone can and should become a priest. ~ Friedrich Schlegel
They can isolate me, but they cannot isolate an ideal. ~ Kevin Rashid Johnson

Quotes

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  • It is in this realm of ideas that humanity is not a free agent. . . . Once an idea becomes an ideal, humanity can freely reject or accept it, but ideas come from a higher source and are imposed... whether men want them or not. Upon the use made of these ideas (which are in the nature of divine emanations, embodying the divine plan for planetary progress) will depend the rapidity of humanity's progress, or its retardation for lack of understanding.
  • The development of an individual will invariably be in the direction of his ideal, and will partake largely of the nature and character of that ideal. ... Is the object of his thought lofty in its character, so is he. Is it low, so is he. We rise or fall, we ascend or descend, according to our ideals.
    • William H. Crogman, "The Importance of Correct Ideals" (1892), in Talks for the Times (1896)
  • The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
    • Albert Einstein, "Chapter I". Living Philosophies. Simon & Schuster. 1931. p. 4. 
  • The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars.
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 85
  • Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.
  • I still endure repression at the hands of the pigs, as do my peers. I still take a principled stand against this repression. But above all else, I am working on bringing my peers into a principled ideological and political consciousness that will give them discipline and a cause to struggle for, while simultaneously imparting to them the correct methods of mass based struggle. The pigs’ response continues to be to isolate me. Their violence has proven futile. Even in this most totalitarian of environments, innovation and relentless commitment to an ideal has proven, to my satisfaction, that the oppressive institutions are not invulnerable. Fear is our greatest hindrance. Fear and half measures. They can isolate me, but they cannot isolate an ideal.
    • Kevin Rashid Johnson, Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010), p.
  • How strong that desire of improvement in the human mind, which is the companion, if it be not the condition, of genius! — that ideality, I mean, that always runs ahead of actuality. Achievement is only the eminence whence we survey something better to be achieved. Ideality is only the avant-courier of the mind, and where that, in a healthy and normal state, goes, I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow.
    • Horace Mann, Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann, ed. Mary Mann (Boston: H. B. Fuller and Company, 1867), p. 195
  • The Real and the Ideal! What harm has been done by this senseless antithesis! The Ideal is by far the realest thing on earth, as political economists and statesmen are beginning to find out through their mistakes.
    • Grace Rhys, The Quest of the Ideal (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1913), p. 26
  • Let the young lovers know that the ideal is the only safe bond. In the difficult night the youth knows his beloved by the light she carries and she him.
    • Grace Rhys, The Quest of the Ideal (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1913), p. 56
  • There are as many gods as there are ideals. And further, the relation of the true artist and the true human being to his ideals is absolutely religious. The man for whom this inner divine service is the end and occupation of all his life is a priest, and this is how everyone can and should become a priest.
  • A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.
    • Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga und Paralipomena, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 345
  • When men of the better class form a society for promoting some noble or ideal aim, the result almost always is that the innumerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too. ... Some of them will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of that which it had at first.
  • Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.
  • High ideals make a people strong. … decay comes when ideals wane.
    • Louis Sullivan, "Education" (1902), in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York: George Wittenborn Inc., 1947), pp. 225–226
  • As soon as the higher ideal is put before us, all false ideals will fade away as the stars fade away when they meet the sun.
  • The further you progress, the higher the ideal of perfection toward which you strive rises.
  • “Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.”
    • Leo Tolstoy, Anna watching her husband in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 28, p. 192

  • One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs. ...

    To one completely committed to this realm of becoming, as are the empiricists, the claim to apprehend verities is a sign of psychopathology. Probably we have here but a highly sophisticated expression of the doctrine that ideals are hallucination and that the only normal, sane person is the healthy extrovert, making instant, instinctive adjustments to the stimuli of the material world.

See also

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