How to Use idealist in a Sentence

idealist

1 of 2 noun

• In it, a young romantic idealist falls head over heels for a young woman.
  — John Hopewell, Variety, 31 Oct. 2023
• And Joan, in return, is a mad fury instead of a mere idealist.
  — New York Times, 1 July 2021
• Some idealists set out to build a new community from scratch.
  — Big Think, 6 Nov. 2025
• His lawyers, all talented idealists, just wanted to save his life.
  — William Finnegan, Smithsonian, 18 May 2018
• But Leys was no idealist in seeing the party as already dead.
  — Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books, 17 June 2019
• But the idealist in me says that there are a lot of people who are taking up bed space in jail that belongs to someone else.
  — Ashley Luthern, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 Mar. 2020
• But ideals fill the idealist with a certain kind of joy, a joy that is not identical to happiness.
  — Mark Edmundson, Harper’s Magazine , 12 Dec. 2022
• At least there were idealists who dreamed such fancies, and their dreams were the pretext for creating this nation.
  — Cressida Leyshon, New Yorker, 23 Nov. 2025
• Despite it all, Caroline remains an idealist with a long view of things.
  — Carl Swanson, Town & Country, 28 Nov. 2022
• Exley, an excitable idealist in his fifties, decided to start a think tank instead.
  — Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 24 May 2021
• Not just because the young idealist who wanted to save the world has evolved into a wizened realist.
  — Kevin Cullen, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Jan. 2020
• Merkel’s commitment to a united Europe is not that of an idealist.
  — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
• But there are also young idealists and those who want to be reunited with partners and their families.
  — Cassie Werber, Quartz, 24 Feb. 2023
• But some voters may no longer look up to the veteran congressman as a courageous idealist.
  — George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, 6 Mar. 2024
• For seven months, a tiny band of idealists dressed in brown linen dined on such spartan fare as unleavened bread, water and porridge.
  — Meghan Cox Gurdon, WSJ, 10 Nov. 2023
• But Zoabi is both clear-eyed and an idealist, which makes the comedy interesting.
  — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 29 July 2019
• These pragmatic idealists are dreamers like Poynter who work hard and want to change the world — but don’t have a network or a plan.
  — Stepfanie Romine, Indianapolis Star, 30 Apr. 2018
• His conversion from a fear junkie to a cautious idealist should be a main focus of Justice League.
  — Simon Abrams, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Nov. 2017
• The president’s greatest threat may not be from high-minded civic idealists, but a grifter whose shamelessness may exceed his own.
  — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 28 Jan. 2020
• My point in posting this is not to demand that everyone become an idealist, jumping into the fray where angels fear to tread.
  — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 11 Oct. 2012
• The move hardened their view of Gascón as an idealist with a limited grasp of how to run the office on a practical basis.
  — James Queally, Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2022
• But then the Warriors, as an organization, have the idealist gene.
  — Gary Peterson, The Mercury News, 17 June 2019
• Essaibi George is working to cast Wu as a head-in-the-clouds idealist who won’t be able to deliver on her grand promises.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 27 Oct. 2021
• First off, there’s a $3 penalty for public daydreaming, which is a financial deathblow for an idealist who wants to change the world.
  — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 14 Dec. 2023
• Many other companies took note of what at first may have seemed like a luxury of West Coast idealists and have followed suit.
  — Mike Weinberger, Rolling Stone, 12 Apr. 2023
• In the 1990s, the idealists of the rock underground went mainstream, and sellout got a second wind.
  — Franz Nicolay, Slate Magazine, 28 July 2017
• Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor, said King was a true idealist.
  — Otis R. Taylor Jr., SFChronicle.com, 3 Aug. 2020
• But Veda is no idealist out to end wars or reject her parents’ materialism.
  — Deputy Managing Editor, Los Angeles Times, 29 June 2026
• That may be because the idealist in Roberts can’t comprehend someone would go to those lengths just to play athletics at a different school.
  — Mick McCabe, Detroit Free Press, 24 Apr. 2018
• If Sanders’ brand appeals to the lefty idealist, Buttigieg’s is designed for the moderate pragmatist.
  — Charlotte Alter / Iowa Falls, Time, 15 Oct. 2019

idealist

2 of 2 adjective

• Jane is an idealist, convinced that her love of the crowd and the quality of her music will attract fans.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 24 June 2021
• But even his aspirations to idealist fantasy would be short-lived.
  — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 12 Apr. 2023
• Sweet floral scents have the same energy as their positive, idealist outlook on life.
  — Bryce Jones, Better Homes & Gardens, 26 Oct. 2023
• Hawks make both idealist and realist arguments for staying in Afghanistan.
  — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 16 Apr. 2021
• The shift happened alongside the realization that the tech industry was no longer the niche realm of idealist computer geeks.
  — New York Times, 18 Nov. 2021
• Some of the best recent scholarship and thinking on work offers a mix of idealist and materialist approaches.
  — Nathan Wolff, Washington Post, 13 June 2023
• Sagittarius is an idealist sign that can totally relate to this tale of enduring relationships.
  — Lisa Stardust, PEOPLE, 9 Jan. 2026
• Consider both the idealist and realist cases for stepping into this global leadership role.
  — Ben Sasse, WSJ, 17 May 2021
• But Weber’s idealist insights (that is, his focus on the way that ideals and beliefs direct other forces) should be supplemented with attention to structural forces.
  — Nathan Wolff, Washington Post, 13 June 2023
• But if some nations have proven susceptible to toxic idealist nonsense, Americans have become more and more receptive to toxic pragmatic nonsense.
  — Mark Edmundson, Harper’s Magazine , 12 Dec. 2022
• Although Oppenheimer represented the idealist wing, who thought development of the bomb might lead to some good end, many of the physicists justified their work on purely empirical grounds.
  — Longreads, 20 July 2023
• The contact with and dependence on such support arguably also bolstered art’s worldliness and acted as an antidote to the petit bourgeois affinity for idealist mystification.
  — Diedrich Diederichsen, Artforum, 1 Dec. 2025
• Her sing-songy voice is the perfect vessel for Ephron's eloquent dialogue, which makes the character an endlessly charming romantic and idealist, perfectly balancing humorous cynicism and sincere emotion.
  — Wesley Stenzel, EW.com, 27 Feb. 2023
• No other festival or event has done more to nurture, develop and celebrate the idealist peculiarities and cultural eccentricities of modern festival culture quite like the merry men and women of Glastonbury.
  — Dave Brooks, Billboard, 28 June 2022
• Solo,introduced in the 1977 original as a Humphrey Bogart–style cynical materialist who turns idealist when circumstances demand it, dies because of that very same capacity for optimism.
  — Vulture, 10 July 2023
• Witnessing the best and worst of humanity helped make McCain both an idealist and pragmatist, as well as an unconventional, independent-minded senator who yet revered the Senate’s institutional traditions.
  — Geoffrey Kabaservice, Washington Post, 16 Oct. 2020