Quotes About Pragmatism

Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.

The important thing is generally the "next step." We ought not to take it unless we are sure that it is advisable; but we should not hesitate to take it once we are sure; and we can safely join with others who also wish to take it, without bothering our heads overmuch as to any fantastic theories they may have concerning, say, the two hundredth step, which is not yet in sight.

In politics it is necessary to take nothing tragically and everything seriously.

He'd simply been around long enough to know that fairy tales seldom came true

A pragmatist is concerned with results, not reality. The pragmatist refuses on principle to speculate about deep reality. . . . Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.

Lesser evil voting should be simply called elementary rationality and elementary morality.

The Empire was not known for its roomy architecture. It was fond of austere pragmatism (that term, austere pragmatism, or sometimes pragmatic austerity, found its way atop many Imperial brochures and propaganda tracts), and so kept its hallways low and narrow.

She had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon.

Slavery as a moral issue never interested Ethel. If God had not meant for Africans to be enslaved, they wouldn't be in chains. She did, however, have firm ideas about not getting killed for other people's high-minded ideas.

Practicality was baked into their bones. They wasted nothing, especially not time.

Život s ohledem na prakti?nost a pohodlí dosedl na jiskru v jejím nitru jako tlustá, t?žká deka.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

An architect should never rationalize a change in purely aesthetic terms, you know that. He should give the client a pragmatic reason for doing it." Lucien

There's nothing offensive about this pragmatism. The relationship between money and voluntariness is too complex to be summarized in one or even many paragraphs of a code. Most people wouldn't go to work if they weren't paid, and yet rarely is it suggested that there should be laws to stop them working. Workers in dangerous occupations tend to get paid more: again it is rarely suggested that compensation for risks is contrary to public policy.

A matter of pragmatism; chemically knocking someone senseless is usually quieter, less messy and less risky to the assailant than killing them.

a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not so good. Hence it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain his position to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge . . . according to necessity.'25

At heart they were secular Calvinists and believed their fellow man was born in a degraded state; consequently, they oversaw atrocities with equanimity and substituted pragmatism for compassion and slept the sleep of the dead.

The usual deal: whatever's going, if it pays, we'll take it. Sorry state of affairs, but that's how it is. Ain't a kind or just 'verse, and nobody's owed a living.

conservative because "he accepted the need of dealing with things as they were, not as he would have wished them to be."2

Everyone is an idealist, until the issue affects them. I knew I was going to do what I had to do.

I think that with Donald Trump, the United States will have a president who is not ideologically limited; that is, he is an open person, much more interested in success, efficiency, and results than political theories.

I don't defend the idea of universal love. It has never existed and will never exist.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology.