Don't you think I have anything better to do than go scrambling around hundreds of square miles of the toughest wilderness in the state looking for pie in the sky?
1970, John Lennon (lyrics and music), “I Found Out”, in John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band:
Old Hare Krishna got nothing on you / Just keep you crazy with nothing to do / Keep you occupied with pie in the sky
1994, Alfred W. Crosby[, Jr.], “Demography, Maize, Land, and the American Character”, in Germs, Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History (Sources and Studies in World History), Armonk, N.Y., London:M. E. Sharpe, →ISBN, page 167:
[M]ost Americans are chronically materialistic and optimistic, more interested in short-range than long-range prospects, and have been for many generations. Pie on the table today or, at the latest, tomorrow—apple pie, mince pie, pecan pie, apricot pie, coconut cream pie, lemon meringue pie, peach cobbler pie, blueberry, blackberry, huckleberry, and pizza pie—that is what they want, not "pie in the sky," whether the source of that promise be Christianity or Marxism.
2015, Sophie Hudson, “The Brat Pack Movies Didn’t Really Cover this Part”, in Home is Where My People Are: The Roads that Lead Us to Where We Belong, Carol Stream, Ill.:Tyndale House Publishers, →ISBN, page 117:
[…] I grew in the House Full of Practical People, so any grand, dream-chasing pursuit has always struck me as sort of pie in the sky.
2020 December 2, Christian Wolmar, “Wales offers us a glimpse of an integrated transport policy”, in Rail, page 57:
Ah, I can hear the objectors say, all this is pie in the sky and too expensive. In fact, according to Lord Burns, "this is all perfectly feasible at a reasonable cost".