By concentrating on what is good in people by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice and by asking them to put their faith in the future socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace no less than war requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.

In the revolt against idealism the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism more humanness more compassion more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

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.

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.

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.