An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. - Sydney J. Harris
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. - Eric Hoffer
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous. - Henry Ford
Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human. - Hugh Macleod
If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you don't have a heart, but if you are still an idealist by thirty you don't have a head.
Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition. - Alisa Steinberg
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
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal. - Oliver Wendell Holmes