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idealism
in a sentence

idealism as in:  youthful idealism

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  • The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.  (source)
    idealism = unrealistic but noble-sounding beliefs
  • They met in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, and so whenever anything happened there, even something terrible, it was like all of a sudden they were not large sedentary creatures, but the young and idealistic and self-sufficient and rugged people they had once been, and their rapture was such that they didn't even glance over at me as...  (source)
    idealistic = having the belief that behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards
  • There had been a time, when Tyler was a boy, when Mother had been idealistic about education.  (source)
    idealistic = believing that good things would result
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  • Under the drawing, Owen had written: "OFTEN A SYMBOL OF REBORN IDEALISM, OR HOPE—OR AN EMBLEM OF IMMORTALITY."†  (source)
  • I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.  (source)
    idealist = someone who unrealistically believes that behavior should be guided by high ideals and standards
  • When we first went, we were still idealistic, but that didn't last.  (source)
    idealistic = having the belief that behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards
  • As the two young idealists left the hotel, the Count watched through the revolving doors.  (source)
    idealists = people who believe behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards -- often implying that they are unrealistic
  • In 1986, Mortenson began a graduate program in neurophysiology at Indiana University, thinking idealistically that with some inspired hard work he might be able to find a cure for his sister.†  (source)
  • Stenton professionalized our idealism, monetized our utopia.†  (source)
  • Anyway, they have this discussion, and the kid is an idealist in a temporary way.  (source)
    idealist = someone who believes behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards
  • Lucy Wainright was idealistic, nothing wrong with that.†  (source)
  • And it is very odd but those who see the changes—who dream, who will not give up—are called idealists . . . and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!  (source)
    idealists = people who believe behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards -- often implying that they are unrealistic
  • I became a police officer because I thought, rather idealistically, that the police existed to prevent crimes like that.†  (source)
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rare meaning

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  • In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguished his transcendental idealism from Descartes's Sceptical Idealism and Berkeley's Dogmatic Idealism.
    idealism = the philosophical theory that there is no reality outside of ideas
  • Idealism dominated 19th-century Western philosophical thought.
  • It treats the universe as limited, which is absolutely a form of reactionary idealism....  (source)
    idealism = philosophical idealism
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  • I enrolled in every course I could squeeze into my schedule, from German idealism to the history of secularism to ethics and law.  (source)
    idealism = the philosophical theory that there is no reality outside of ideas
  • We can begin to state the difference between realism and idealism in terms of this opposition of contents and objects.†  (source)
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