Quotes About Political realism

Machiavelli was no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he wrote

Lo que considera un error es que la política se piense idealizándola contra la evidencia empírica a costa de supeditarla rígidamente a las normas y valores cristianos.

But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism.

The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world — no ideals.

...political realism is the way forward for any system that is genuinely for humanity or for the interest and advancement of the people of this world.

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality, for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done will rather bring about his ruin than his preservation.

The frontier was closed, as Clare Boothe Luce wrote half a century earlier, resources were finite, and political systems should be based on an acceptance of those facts.

I'm not interested in being Don Quixote. I'm interested in running the City of New York.

It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability.

The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic.

According to Hegel, philosophy should not try to change the world because it cannot. It always arrives too late on the scene to offer concrete political proposals.

States are built not on the ideals but on the nature of men.

Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology.

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security

But Vajpayee was a realist. He had joined the BJP recognising that the party would never come to power during his lifetime. That did not matter so much to him. He had never been after power. Otherwise, he would have accepted Narasimha Rao's offer, made in 1993, to join the Congress. He was happy sitting in the opposition and sticking to his principles.

In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

I think a lot of people on both sides have extremely naive views of what government is capable of.

Almost everybody in the campaign, still an extremely small outfit, thought of themselves as a clear-eyed team, as realistic about their prospects as perhaps any in politics. The unspoken agreement among them: not only would Donald Trump not be president, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

He calls the resulting phenomenon 'capitalist realism', defined as the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it … a pervasive atmosphere conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining action.11