No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

Idealism itself can become dangerous. But going too far in the other direction, towards relativism, amoral expediency and opportunism, is equally perilous.

The obsession with equilibrium has imposed enormous costs on economics.

The trouble with your ideals is that if you live up to all of them, you become impossible to live with.

When failure is not an option, success can be expensive.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

Idealists, I know, are dangerous, but the claim of the ideal (Ibsen) has to be felt or else.... Or else the world, our deteriorating world, will continue on its course by sheer inertia. Inertia is taking over, right here; you can sense it.

Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission.

We may fill our purses, but we pay a heavy price for it in the loss of picturesqueness and beauty.

He was finding it ruinously expensive to be rich.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.

Perhaps you were too idealistic.
I admit it. But I don't believe I overestimate the importance of ideals. Only when people believe in something can they move the world. The
trouble is that people simply don't believe in open society as a goal worth fighting for.

Money costs too much.