Andre Malraux Quotes

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.

To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.

The idealist walks on tiptoe, the materialist on his heels.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.

I've never understood the division between so-called realists and so-called idealists.

The laws were framed by certain well-meaning visionaries who, building republics in the air, have tried to reach political perfection on the assumption that humanity is perfect. So we have had philosophers instead of leaders, philanthropy instead of legislation, dialectic instead of tactics, and sophists instead of soldiers.

Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation.

Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

It makes sense to work towards a better world, but it doesn't make any sense to have illusions about what the real world is.

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

There is no realism without an element of idealism.

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

The problem with Raven is that she's so smart, so sometimes it's hard for her to be hopeful or idealistic, because she's so realistic. So even if she's working on a solution, she's not proud of it until it's concrete.

Nothing has ever become better by ignoring the reality.

Back when I was an idealistic 18-year-old on my way to Chicago, I might have believed that being on the side of virtue would guarantee a good outcome. These many years later, I know better.

You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it." "Are you saying we shouldn't hope?" "I'm saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open!

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

Idealism and realism meet in the actual.

Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.

The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.