Sample Sentences for
idealism
(editor-reviewed)

idealism as in:  youthful idealism

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    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
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    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
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    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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    The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.  (source)
    idealism = unrealistic but noble-sounding beliefs
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    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
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    Naïve, idealistic hopes had been shattered.  (source)
    idealistic = noble but unrealistic
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    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
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    I became a police officer because I thought, rather idealistically, that the police existed to prevent crimes like that.†  (source)
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    Did my idealism cloud my commitment to the woman who would be my wife?†  (source)
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    In those days he was a headstrong idealist.†  (source)
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    How could men sustain a high level of idealistic commitment through the grim experiences of disease, death, exhaustion, and frustration as the war ground on year after year?  (source)
    idealistic = the belief that behavior should be guided by high ideals or standards
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    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
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    I earned thirteen dollars a week and I had to support four people with it, and should I risk that thirteen dollars by acting idealistically?†  (source)
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meaning too rare to warrant focus

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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
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    Idealism dominated 19th-century Western philosophical thought.
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    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
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    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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