Idealism Quotes

4 quotes

That other world of flesh into which has been woven pride and greed looks askance at the idealist, the dreamer.
If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer is a warning against idleness.
If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions.
If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect to be less than understanding, it shall be ill with the body.
The hands of the actual are forever reaching toward such as these—forever seizing greedily upon them.
It is of such that the bond servants are made.

It was the American war against the poor of the earth, the most easily killed, the collateral damage. As was asked at the beginning, was it really about fighting communism or was it a misunderstood or disguised motivation? It was George Kennen, America's leading early cold war strategist, who went to the heart of the matter in a memorandum written in 1948: 'with 50% percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality, and daydreamings. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. We are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'