Really I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady you know 'tough this and tough that.' Then there is this business about 'gooey.' The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality but I did not of course manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self.

Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case it is usually at the expense of others. In other words it is the opposite of idealism.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace making the best of circumstances.

The arts quite simply nourish the soul. They sustain comfort inspire. There is nothing like that exquisite moment when you first discover the beauty of connecting with others in celebration of larger ideals and shared wisdom.

I don't believe in one ideal beauty.

The ideal has many names and beauty is but one of them.

A lot of directors idealize their leading ladies or turn them into these objects of sexuality and beauty.

The ideal beauty is a fugitive which is never found.

A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know.

The ideal and the beautiful are identical the ideal corresponds to the idea and beauty to form hence idea and substance are cognate.

The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then like any great place it collapsed and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.

The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins downsizes and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art but by no means all seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art because to us it is false and visionary was to the makers of it true and existent.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal also his fine art finally also the only kind of piety he knows his 'divine service.'

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

Art is not a study of positive reality it is the seeking for ideal truth.

All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture) the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism idealism and fantasy.

What We want is to make it possible for our unfortunate people to live a life of industry for it is by steady work alone that we hope for our physical and moral rehabilitation. For this reason above all we have undertaken to rally our people around our ideal.

Our ideal is to make her ever stronger and better and finer because in that way alone as we believe can she be of the greatest service to the world's peace and to the welfare of mankind.

An American a Negro... two souls two thoughts two unreconciled strivings two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.