Impractical Quotes

But dreams are funny things. Sometimes even the most impractical and irresponsible dreams just won't be ignored. And sometimes when you don't follow your dreams, your dreams come looking for you. ~ Lizzie K. Foley

Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity. ~ Cat Sebastian

My varying pairs of legs can be quite practical or quite impractical, and I don't judge them either way. Some are for getting around a 12-hour day, pounding the pavement, and some are to feel like I can transform my own body into a workable, changing piece of art. ~ Aimee Mullins

Loo, life is black and white. You don't know what's good for you, because you don't see the black and white! You don't see where the black lines end and where the white lines begin! You're going to grow up to be no good if you keep on that way. It's impractical. I only have one child, and I won't have her growing up to be impractical. I can't think of a worse thing to be than impractical! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Other call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep. ~ Lao-Tzu

His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see. ~ Eleanor Catton

Mr. Malfoy is new to the business of having ideas, and so when he has one, he becomes proud of himself for having it. He has not yet had enough ideas to unflinchingly discard those that are beautiful in some aspects and impractical in others; he has not yet acquired confidence in his own ability to think of better ideas as he requires them. What we are seeing here is not Mr. Malfoy's best idea, I fear, but rather his only idea. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Writing your own blog platform is like roasting your own coffee: it's impractical and you probably shouldn't do it, but for people who really, truly care about it, it's worthwhile to them for their own personal priorities that sound crazy to everyone else. Well, I write my own blog platform and I roast my own coffee. ~ Marco Arment

Interestingly, God's remedy for Elijah's depression was not a refresher course in theology but food and sleep ... Before God spoke to him at all, Elijah was fed twice and given a good chance to sleep. Only then, and very gently, did God confront him with his error. This is always God's way. Having made us as human beings, He respects our humanness and treats us with integrity. That is, He treats us true to the truth of who we are. It is human beings and not God who have made spirituality impractical. ~ Os Guinness

Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool. ~ Chuck Klosterman

To power the country by building 186,000 fifty-story wind turbines - and running 19,000 miles of new transmission lines - just seems impractical and preposterous compared to the idea of building a hundred new nuclear facilities primarily on the sites we already have. ~ Lamar Alexander

There seemed to be a limitless number of objects in the world that had no practical use but that people wanted to preserve: cell phones with their delicate buttons, iPads, Tyler's Nintendo console, a selection of laptops. There were a number of impractical shoes, stilettos mostly, beautiful and strange. There were three car engines in a row, cleaned and polished, a motorcycle composed mostly of gleaming chrome. Traders brought things for Clark sometimes, objects of no real value that they knew he would like: magazines and newspapers, a stamp collection, coins. There were the passports or the driver's licenses or sometimes the credit cards of people who had lived at the airport and then died. Clark kept impeccable records. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

She did occasionally criticise my priorities, how could I buy three new LPs one Friday afternoon when I was walking around in shoes with the sole flapping off? They're just material goods, I responded, objects, while music was completely different. This was the mind, for Christ's sake. This is what we need, really, and I do mean really, and it's important to prioritise it. Everyone prioritises. Everyone wants new jackets and new shoes and new cars and new houses and new caravans and new mountain cabins and new boats. But I don't. I buy books and records because they say something about what life is about, what it is to be a human here on earth. Do you understand?
'Yes, you're probably right, in a way. But isn't it terribly impractical to walk around with your soles coming off? And it doesn't look very nice, either, does it.'
'What do you want me to do? I haven't got any money. I prioritised music on this occasion. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

There she was, the mother of me, like a lit plinth,
Heavenly, though I was reared to find this kind
Of visitation impractical; she was an unbearable detail
Of the supreme celestial map,
Of which I had been taught that there was
No such thing. ~ Lucie Brock-Broido

And as an artist, as someone who writes stories and tries to make words into beautiful forms, it's vitally important to me, especially in a culture that's forgotten the value of beauty. It's a primary source or inspiration, I guess, when so much of what goes on around you is only about money and big swinging dick capitalism. It's important for blokes to be able to do beautiful stuff, impractical stuff, that adds to life. That's an early life-lesson from surfing.
~ Tim Winton

I long for the luxury of being impractical. ~ Neal Shusterman

There was no paper in Hell. All the fire made it impractical. ~ Katrina Monroe

Death's pale horse looked up from its oats and gave a little whinny of greeting. The horse's name was Binky. He was a real horse. Death had tried fiery steeds and skeletal horses in the past, and found them impractical, especially the fiery ones, which tended to set light to their own bedding and stand in the middle of it looking embarrassed. ~ Terry Pratchett

An impractical man
which he not only seems to be, but really is
will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea. ~ Robert Musil

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. ~ Cecil Beaton

When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractical ambition, especially since the magazine was located in Santa Barbara, way off any journalist's normal career path. ~ Virginia Postrel

The only way to survive in a community where movement was the norm and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense on tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources. ~ Reza Aslan

They looked at the world with an impractical, luminous earnestness that moved her, but never convinced her. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The more modest and impractical the kitchen, the more likely one will be invited to stay for a meal. Show me a fancy house with a top-of-the-line gourmet kitchen, and I'll show you a family that eats out a lot. ~ Firoozeh Dumas

if you suppose any of the things not in our own control to be either good or evil, when you are disappointed of what you wish, or incur what you would avoid, you must necessarily find fault with and blame the authors. For every animal is naturally formed to fly and abhor things that appear hurtful, and the causes of them; and to pursue and admire those which appear beneficial, and the causes of them. It is impractical, then, that one who supposes himself to be hurt should be happy about the person who, he thinks, hurts him, just as it is impossible to be happy about the hurt itself. Hence, ~ Epictetus

He expected her to feel what she did not know how to feel. There were things that existed for him that she could not penetrate. With his close friends, she often felt vaguely lost. They were youngish and well-dressed and righteous, their sentences filled with "sort of," and "the ways in which"; they gathered at a bar every Thursday, and sometimes one of them had a dinner party, where Ifemelu mostly listened, saying little, looking at them in wonder: were they serious, these people who were so enraged about imported vegetables that ripened in trucks? They wanted to stop child labor in Africa. They would not buy clothes made by underpaid workers in Asia. They looked at the world with an impractical, luminous earnestness that moved her, but never convinced her. Surrounded by them, Blaine hummed with references unfamiliar to her, and he would seem far away, as though he belonged to them, and when he finally looked at her, his eyes warm and loving, she felt something like relief. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

That's the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason? So hard--so unreasonable--to root our lives upon a distant wisp of holiness. Faith is grand but impractical: How does one live an eternal idea in a daily way? It's so much easier to be reasonable. Reason is practical, its rewards are immediate, its workings are clear. But alas, reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in the face of adversity. How do we balance the two, how do we live with both faith and reason? ~ Yann Martel

Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake ~ Joan Gilbert

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.
- Martin Luther King Jr. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The problem, this book will argue, is not just that law schools generate so many bad ideas - mistaken and benighted ideas, impractical and socially destructive ideas - but that those ideas follow a predictable pattern. They confer power on legal intellectuals and their allies - at least the power to prescribe, often the power to litigate. The movement that results - whether couched as public interest law, as minority empowerment law, or as international human rights law - is in fact a bid for power, whether naked or cleverly disguised. ~ Walter Olson

Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Are you all right?" I whisper uncertainly.

"Fine." He shakes his head once, and then the tension leaves his body. "I'm fine. Don't finish your sentence yet. It's going to lead to me slaughtering things."

"You like slaughtering things."

"Compared to this? No." He touches me again, his fingers grazing my arm. Tentative, hesitant. When I tell him he's usually the practical one, he replies, "It must be your influence. I'm actually about to make several suggestions, and all of them are impractical."

I smile. "Ooh, several suggestions, is it? My, my. Impractical Kiaran MacKay is . . . dare I say it? Adorable."

Kiaran looks at me in disgust. "I am not."

"You are and you don't even know it. Adorable."

"Adorable is something we call foolish humans right before we kill them."

"Adorable is what we call adult men who love to cuddle and swear on their lives that they don't." Kiaran makes a sound in his throat. "You can growl at me all you want. I know your weaknesses, MacKay. Cuddling. Neck kisses. That ticklish spot just above your - "

I laugh as he grabs me around the waist and pulls me against him. He kisses me fiercely enough to make my toes curl. Then he pulls back with the smug expression of someone who has had thousands of years to perfect seduction and knows exactly how to use it against me. ~ Elizabeth May

There was a time when academia was society's refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical: it would seem society now has no place for them at all. ~ David Graeber

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The charge that an idea is radical, impractical, or long- haired is met by showing that a prominent businessman has favored it?an additional tactic in this strategy of defense?is to assert that Winston Churchill once sponsored the particular idea. If one is challenged, a sufficiently careful investigation will show that he did. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

There were a number of impractical shoes, stilettos mostly, beautiful and strange. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

That deep longing that you keep dismissing as impractical, may be the very thing your soul is calling you to do. ~ Renae A. Sauter

Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

They could only stare at Esme's shoes and wonder why she as wearing footwear that was so violent and impractical. ~ Lemony Snicket

In Scripture, doctrine is practical and high doctrine is highly practical. Those who disparage doctrine for the sake of practice are impractical. Those who disparage practice for the sake of doctrine are unskilled in the word of righteousness. We are never to put apart what God has joined together. ~ Douglas Wilson

I have made no attempt at chronology. My writing hasn't changed much over the years. That's because I haven't changed. I am still the impractical dreamer that I was sixty years ago, when I decided that writing would be my vocation and my profession. I do not suffer from writer's block. I have only to sit down at my desk for the words to come tumbling on to my writing pad. And if an ant moves across my desk, I shall record its transit. ~ Ruskin Bond

To make matters worse, some of the books had actually become migratory. In the nineteenth century Brakebills had appointed a librarian with a highly Romantic imagination who had envisioned a mobile library in which books fluttered from shelf to shelf like birds, reorganizing themselves spontaneously under their own pwer in response to searches. For the first few months the effect was sadi to have been quite dramatic. A painteding the scned survived as a mural behind the circulation desk, with enormaous atlases soaring around the place like condors.
But the system turned out to be totally impractical. The wear and tear o the spines alone was too costly, and the books were horribly disobedient. The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly dposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub - sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribably papery susurrus. ~ Lev Grossman

Wikipedia is run by hippies of course - the same kind of impractical utopian losers who gave us the first affordable desktop computer and the iPod ~ Andre The BFG

I have come to believe that I am a lesser authority in my own life. I have learned to distrust less-than-rational, nontechnical experiences, my own phenomenal knowledge. Because, to trust the senses - the mortal body - is to risk sounding crazy, especially, it seems. if you're a woman.
She's seeing things.
She's hearing things.
She's so sensitive.
Read: She's irrational.
And this I have internalized. Who am I to trust my body, my senses, my instincts? Who am I to know how to raise my child without consulting parenting books and up-to-date rearing studies? Who am I to try to find God outside of an institutionally approved, fully vetted doctrine? Who am I to think I can pursue impractical dreams? Who am I to be taken seriously? Who am I to think I'm capable or worthy? Who am I to...who am I? ~ Leigh Ann Henion

I think sometimes big budget means explosions! CGI! CGI, the possibilities are so limitless that it begins to be impractical. ~ Brit Marling

Idealism and naiveté were youthful cousins. Foresight and the considerations of age and experience often brought inaction, compromise, second-guessing; the ability to foresee the extent of actions--to understand implications of cause and effect--could effectively thwart spontaneous, if impractical, decisions. ~ Brent Hayward

Anything that is impractical can be play. It's doing something other than what is necessary to continue living as an animal. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto

For their optimism, these few spent years being disparaged as futurists, as impractical dreamers, as kids playing in a sandbox - until suddenly, in the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016, the industry recognized that the future the visionaries described wasn't just possible. It was practical and desirable, and coming sooner than anyone might have ever thought. ~ Lawrence Burns

Perception without judgment is spineless; judgment with no perception is blind. Introversion lacking any extraversion is impractical; extraversion with no introversion is superficial. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers

If I could only escape, if I could only escape ... he murmured the words to himself a dozen times; then metaphorically shook himself for being so impractical, so romantic, so dutiless. ~ John Fowles

Leila. Schoolgirls are like sports cars. They're nice to look at, but they're impractical. In the end, they don't do what you need them to do."
I had to stifle my smile, he looked so serious. Then I stole a glance back at the lithe-limbed shadows beneath the tress. "Is that so?"
"It's true. They won't let you take them up the arse. They're rubbish at sucking you. You want to ride them at a hundred miles a hour, but you end up doing forty in the sixty zone because you're too fucking scared of damaging them. ~ Lucy V. Morgan

Friends are such an impractical idea. Especially for someone as extraordinary as you ~ Rose Foster

I think of how sometimes God puts people together, maybe more often than we realize. We can disregard it, lie to ourselves, find the reasons why it's impractical. But something within the creation of them connects. I've been afraid of it. There is something fearful in revealing our true selves, allowing others to peer intimately inside. It takes such trust, and none of us are completely trustworthy. ~ Cindy McCormick Martinusen

It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. ~ Anne Frank

Simply to have all the necessities of life and three meals a day will not bring happiness. Happiness is hidden in the unnecessary and in those impractical things that bring delight to the inner person. ~ Edward M Hays

If we are going to be ready for Jesus Christ, we have to stop being religious. In other words, we must stop using religion as if it were some kind of a lofty lifestyle - we must be spiritually real. If you are avoiding the call of the religious thinking of today's world, and instead are "looking unto Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2), setting your heart on what He wants, and thinking His thoughts, you will be considered impractical and a daydreamer. But when He suddenly appears in the work of the heat of the day, you will be the only one who is ready. You should trust no one, and even ignore the finest saint on earth if he blocks your sight of Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers

I know what I really want for Christmas.
I want my childhood back.
Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy. ~ Robert Fulghum

I'm not sure it's possible to stay in Hawaii. It's kind of impractical. ~ Terry O'Quinn

Now she knew the haven she had sought in dreams, the place of warm safety which had always been hidden from her in the mist. It was not Ashley - oh, never Ashley! There was no more warmth in him than in a marsh light, no more security than in quicksand. It was Rhett - Rhett who had strong arms to hold her, a broad chest to pillow her tired head, jeering laughter to pull her affairs into proper perspective. And complete understanding, because he, like her, saw truth as truth, unobstructed by impractical notions of honor, sacrifice, or high belief in human nature. ~ Margaret Mitchell

When people hate, its power engulfs them and they are totally consumed by it ... Keep struggling against hatred and resentment. At times you will have the upper hand, at times you will feel beaten down. Although it is extremely difficult, never let hatred completely overtake you ... Never stop trying to live the commandment of love and forgiveness. Do not dilute the strength of Jesus's message; do not shun it; do not dismiss it as unreal and impractical. Do not cut it to your size, trying to make it more applicable to real life in the world. Do not change it so that it will suit you. Keep it as it is, aspire to it, desire it, and work for its achievement ~ Anonymous

I told them a thousand times if I told them once:
Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks;
They won't hold up; you're taking an awful chance.
Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks.
You want to be impractical, go ahead.
But just remember, I told them; wait and see.
You're making a big mistake. Awright, I said,
But when the wolf comes, don't come running to me.
The funny thing is, they didn't. There they sat,
One in his crummy yellow shack, and one
Under his roof of twigs, and the wolf ate
Them, hair and hide. Well, what is done is done.
But I'd been willing to help them, all along,
If only they'd once admitted they were wrong. ~ Sarah Henderson Hay

One of the ego's main defenses against doing so (experiencing our Essence)is the belief that spirituality is something rarefied, impractical, and very far away. In fact, it is closer than we think, as the mystics assure us: we do not have to go anywhere or accomplish anything. What we must learn is to stop running away from ourselves . . . The good news is that you are already here: your Essence already exists entirely and perfectly . . . We do not need to learn something new or anything to be our True Nature. Spiritual progress involves seeing what is right under our noses - really, what is right under the layers of our personality. Spiritual work is therefore a matter of subtraction, of letting go, rather than of adding anything to what is already present. ~ Don Richard Riso

There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people's brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything - a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps - the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical. The power of ~ Atul Gawande

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. ~ Thomas A. Edison

The Bible is useful because it opens our eyes, and because it's highly impractical to walk through life with our eyes closed. ~ Peter J. Leithart

The current fashions are impractical for an active person. Skirts so tight one must toddle like an infant, bodices boned so firmly it is impossible to draw a deep breath ... . And bustles! Of all the idiotic contrivances foisted upon helpless womankind, the bustle is certainly the worst. ~ Elizabeth Peters

The main reason for moral inconsistencies and betrayals, Ayn Rand believed, is that men have been taught to pursue ideals that are irrational and therefore impractical. Traditional virtues, such as self-sacrifice, faith, and humility, are contrary to the requirements of human life and happiness. They force men into the horrible dilemma of having to choose between virtue and happiness - between morality and life itself. ~ Robert James Bidinotto

The curtains were blood-red and drawn. This was not an office. It was a small library, two storeys high, with thin ladders and impractical balconies and an expansive ceiling featuring a gaggle of naked Greeks. It was the sort of library you'd marry a man for. ~ Catherine Lowell

Experience is comparable to fashion; an action that proved successful today will be unworkable and impractical tomorrow. Only principles endure ~ Og Mandino

If God is not with us, we do not want to continue. If the Sermon on the Mount is simply impractical, our mission work is hopeless. We have no backup plan. We have nothing but Him. ~ Heidi Baker

I regard it as ethically unacceptable and impractical to censor any aspect of trying to understand the nature of our world. ~ Lewis Wolpert

He smiled. "I suppose I thought we'd have a madly impractical, terrifyingly modern sort of marriage. One based on love. Not to mention dangerous undertakings and hair's-breadth escapes from burning buildings, high ledges and exploding sewers."
"And bickering."
"Always that, yes."
"Assuming I want to marry at all."
"True. I know of no good way of forcing you to do anything."
"And you're mad enough to think it could work - one day?"
He cupped her face in his hands. His smile was so brilliant it seemed to illuminate the room. "I think it would be heaven."
She trembled, then. "You have a very strange idea of heaven."
"Kiss me and see. ~ Y.S. Lee

With no positivity, there is no hope; with no negativity, there is no improvement. ~ Criss Jami

When escape was impractical and inaction unreasonable, attack was always preferable. ~ Tom Wood

He took her face between his hands, turning it up, and looking down at her for a moment before he kissed her. "I do love you, Jenny," he said gently. "Very much indeed
you are part of my life. Julia was never that-only a boy's impractical dream. ~ Georgette Heyer

I STILL THINK THE REVOLUTION IS TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR POETRY, MEANDERING, FOR THE FRAIL AND VULNERABLE, THE RARE AND OBSCURE, THE IMPRACTICAL AND LOCAL AND SMALL. ~ Rebecca Solnit

When you're a kid, I think you want to be a film star. And I'm not as enamoured with that any more. The reality of that life is a lot of travel, and a lot of being away, which is impractical because I have four children, so I don't want to be away that much, not the other side of the world away. ~ Rob Brydon

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves. ~ Jacque Fresco

Trump's immigration positions do not deserve a response because they are so outlandish. If you force me to give you three words to describe them they would be: ludicrous, impractical and racist. ~ Bill Richardson

For a moment it seemed that her impeccably impractical education - in which she'd learned about Middle English and Duchamp's urinal and sub-Saharan droughts but had never been taught how to apply for a credit card or answer an office phone - wasn't useless after all. ~ Ralph Sassone

She'd been prepared for him to say he was too old, she must put away that sweet but impractical idea, they would forget all about it and go back to being good friends. She had almost hoped he would say that; it would forestall the complication and entanglement, yet leave her with a grief to harbor, sad but tender, grief like a secret, soothing companion. But this! There was nothing soothing about this. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

In Western society, and particularly in American society, imagination is stulified from infancy. The imaginative child is discouraged and upbraided. He is told that the process is mere dreaming, that it wastes time and leads nowhere. It is said to be "impractical." As the child grows and its imagination inevitably leads it to express unconventional ideas and to try new behavior, it is chided and even viciously punished for such signs of unorthodoxy. ~ Philip Wylie

I had the loopy, impractical idea that we might just belong together for keeps. ~ Sarina Bowen

In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always ~ John Stuart Mill

If you aren't having impractical ideas, and dreaming impossible dreams, then you aren't reaching far enough, high enough, or deep enough! ~ Dixie Gillaspie

War is a racket. It always has been ... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. ~ Smedley Butler

There is nothing wrong with impractical loves ~ Kristin Cashore

My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an
impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Men like Crawford mistrusted Keynes because his views were unconfused. Throughout his life Keynes produced unimpeachable facts and figures, clear analyses, direct solutions and trenchant practical advice all based on the nitty-gritty of his subject, which were discounted by officials, politicians and bankers who dismissed him as academic, theoretical, quixotic, impractical. To them his clarity seemed too good to be true. ~ Richard Davenport-Hines

In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish. ~ Mercedes Lackey

With an exasperated sigh, he turned his head to kiss my fingers. "You're impossible."
"I'm impractical, improbable, but never impossible. ~ Shelby Mahurin

It had seemed too whimsival on the occasions when she'd worn it, a quirky and impractical gift from a husband who hadn't lived to see her wear it. I never thought about the fact that, as Estella Marino, she was literally Star of the Sea. My grandfather had.
"I don't suppose I have much of a choice now," I said aloud.
"The admirable thing, darling Ella," came Edward's reply, "is that you ever thought you did. ~ Melissa Jensen

Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now. ~ Ayn Rand

Do the IMPRACTICAL so that God can do the IMPOSSIBLE! ~ Mike Phillips

Others try to remove guilt by shifting the standards of right and wrong in the name of cultural progression. One of the easiest ways to assuage guilt is to convince ourselves that our moral standards are impractical or outdated. Greed is not wrong; it's necessary in the good of ambition. Promoting ourselves is the only way to be successful. Lust is natural for contemporary men and women, and sex is expected regardless of marriage or gender. We attempt to remove our guilt by redefining right and wrong according to cultural fads. Yet guilt remains. No matter how hard ~ David Platt

Unreasonable," "unrealistic," and "impractical" are all words used to marginalize a person or idea that fails to conform with conventionally expected standards. ~ Chris Guillebeau

[Petunias are] as hopelessly impractical as a chiffon ball dress. ~ Eleanor Perenyi