quixotic (adj.)
A quixotic plan is driven by an ideal that may be impossible to carry out. The adjective comes from a character in a book.1
Don Quixote, in Miguel de Cervantes’s novel, sets out to live as a knight. He sees a world of quests and enemies where other people see ordinary things. When he spots windmills on a plain, he takes them for giants. Sancho Panza tells him what they are, but Quixote charges them anyway. After he falls, he decides an enchanter must have turned the giants into windmills.2
His name first became a word for a person like him, a Quixote, and then an adjective. Quixotic can admire someone’s commitment to a noble aim while questioning whether the aim can be reached.1
The plan to restore every abandoned house was quixotic.