Quotes About Pragmatism

the company may be saying "state-of-the-art" when the pragmatist wants to hear "industry standard.

you get installed by the pragmatists as the leader, and from then on, they conspire to help keep you there.

Remember, philosophically speaking, Americans are mongrels —practical materialists but with a dreamy streak of divine approval.

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.

I try to be a realist and not a pessimist or an optimist.

Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

This book is about envisioning your life together with love, care, and mindfulness. It is about skillfully balancing the crazy wisdom of love with the grounded practicality of making a life together. It is about the middle road, the constant, meaningful interplay between these two poles, loving a person and loving the life you create together. Strong marriages exist here, between the fire of intimacy and the ground of pragmatism.

People in this arena weren't crowned for their compassion

What I'm pushing for is an economic discipline that will be closer to other social sciences; in particular, we should be more pragmatic about the methods that we are using instead of pretending that we have our own scientific apparatus with very sophisticated mathematic models that distinguish us from sociologists and historians.

I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.

Heuristics are simplified rules of thumb that make things simple and easy to implement. But their main advantage is that the user knows that they are not perfect, just expedient, and is therefore less fooled by their powers. They become dangerous when we forget that.

Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.

Anything that hinders one's survival at an individual, collective, tribal, or general level is, to me, irrational.

Recall that Fat Tony was in favor of just "making a buck" as opposed to being "proven right.

Rationality does not depend on explicit verbalistic explanatory factors; it is only what aids survival, what avoids ruin.

when you leave people alone, they tend to settle for practical reasons.

reality doesn't care about winning arguments: survival is what matters.

My football philosophy is to win as many games as possible. Brand of football? I believe in mixing a bit of everything. You have to.

I would rather have a competent extremist than an incompetent moderate.

We do ourselves as politicians no favours if we are seen to peddle unachievable moonshine.