Ideal

"Alles das, woran ich auf Erden gelitten habe und was mir am Menschen böswillig und gehässig erschien, brüchig und gemein, machtwillig oder eitel, alles das begegnete mir auf meinem Lebenswege stets im Gewande der Ideale."

"Das deutsche Schicksal: vor einem Schalter zu stehn. Das deutsche Ideal: hinter einem Schalter zu sitzen."

"Das Große posaunet sich nie aus, es ist bloß und wirkt so. Meist weiß das Große nicht, daß es groß ist, daher die höchsten Künstler der Welt die lieblichste kindlichste Naivetät haben und dem Ideale gegenüber, das sie immer leuchten sehen, stets demütig sind."

"Das Ideal ist die Wahrheit, von weitem gesehen."

"Der beste Beweis einer physischen Kraft ist der Hang nach hohen kühnen Idealen."

"Der Übermensch ist ein verfrühtes Ideal, das den Menschen voraussetzt."

"Das Kunstwerk hat keine Idee, sondern es ist selbst eine Idee. // Der Unterschied zwischen Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst ist ganz müßig; die Kunst ist ihrem Wesen nach ideal, sonst hört sie auf, Kunst zu sein."

"Die Quelle des Ideals ist der heiße Durst nach Ewigkeit, die Sehnsucht nach Gott, also das Edelste unsrer Natur."

"Die sogenannte emanzipatorische oder kritische Pädagogik, die praktisch alles durchdrungen hat, was seit 1970 im Schulunterricht neu eingeführt worden ist, hat doch ein überragendes Ziel: Schon vom ersten Grundschuljahr an darf es keine »Anpassung«, keine Übernahme von Idealen, von Werten, von bisherigen Spielregeln im zwischenmenschlichen Verkehr, vor allem zwischen Kind und Eltern, geben."

"Ein der menschlichen Natur so widersprechendes Ideal wie das des Kommunismus geht nicht zu verwirklichen ohne Gewalt. Das ist das Grundproblem"- Karl zu Schwarzenberg, Interview in der Sächsischen Zeitung, Dresden, vom 11. April 2008 unter dem Titel "Wir sollten auf unser Maul aufpassen"

"Ein wildes Mädchen ist eben ein solches Unding wie eine betrunkene Nachtigall; ein geziertes die Parodie des misshandelten Ideals."

"Erwachsene nennen ihre Teddybären Ideale."

"Für das Leben wird ein Ideal benötigt. Ein Ideal ist jedoch nur dann Ideal, wenn es Vollkommenheit ist."

"Ich habe keine lebendige Empfindung eines Verkehrs mit Gott. Ich beneide die, die eine solche haben, da ich weiß, daß sie mir unendlich helfen würde. Das Gött­liche ist für mein aktives Leben auf abstrakte Begrif­fe beschränkt, die als Ideale mich interessieren und beeinflussen, aber sie tun es nur schwach im Ver­gleich mit dem Gottesgefühl, wenn ich ein solches hätte."

"Ich habe mich wohl schon tausendmal über diese Fähigkeit des Menschen gewundert, das höchste Ideal neben der niedrigsten Gemeinheit in seiner Seele hegen zu können, und beides mit vollkommener Aufrichtigkeit."

"Idealbildung ist Hinausgehen über anerkannte Werte, Wertantizipation, Revolution des Wertbewußtseins."

"Mein Ideal ist, zur Kindheit heranzureifen. Das wäre erst die wahre Reife."

"Mit dem Ideal der absoluten Freiheit wird dasselbe Unwesen getrieben wie mit allem Absoluten."

"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."

"Obviousley, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle of nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There are those who see a great mystery in the presence of eternal values in a moving and animal world, and think to solve that dualism, as they call it, by denying that nature can have spiritual functions and spirit a natural cause; but nothing can be simpler if we make, as we should, existence the test of possibility. Ab esse ad posse valet illatio. Nature is a perfect garden of ideals, and passion is the perpetual and fertile soil for poetry, myth, and speculation."

"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."

"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."

"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.”"

"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."