Quotes About Pragmatism

I prefer to think about problems the way engineers do. If a valve doesn't work, they don't say, "Well, we must have valves, so let's try two valves." If a valve doesn't work, they say, "Well, what would work?" Their rule is, if it doesn't work, don't do it more, do something else.

16. I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.

Pragmatism asks its usual question. Grant an idea or belief to be true, it says, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?

It is at this point that my own solution begins to appear. I offer the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts. I hope I may be able to leave many of you with as favorable an opinion of it as I preserve myself. Yet, as I am near the end of my hour, I will not introduce pragmatism bodily now.

Even the best needles are not sharp at both ends.

Once he had a foot in the door he explained, "It's not for me to make moral judgments. I'm a businessman. I deal with people as they are, not as they ought to be." "Speaking

Anyone wishing to affect events must be opportunist to some extent. The real dis­tinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?"

What made the new world picture so potent was that its method of deliberately ignoring the complex reality of organisms was an immense labor-saving device: its pragmatic efficiency counterbalanced its conceptual superficiality. The universe as a whole, the whole that contains all other wholes, is immeasurable and unthinkable in its infinite variety and multi-fold concreteness. Only by samples and abstractions can one put together in the mind a playtoy model.

I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived. President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong-un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

The egoist is fooled by no ideals: he discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest.

I am not arguing for a utopian society; equal opportunity for all, though ideal, is unrealistic.

Simply put: the easiest and most likely explanation, however mundane, is probably correct.

Patriotism was a great thing but it worked best when it was tempered by common sense.

That's all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory?

I'm from the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of screenwriting. I just like to preserve what works and ignore what doesn't work.

What good does it do to remain tied to an ideology if you don't achieve anything by it? I have an ideology myself - you can't work in a vacuum; you have to have faith in something.

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong.

I think, when I wrote 'Children of Jihad,' I wrote it with a very optimistic view of what technology can do. Today I maintain that optimistic view, but I'm also aware of the challenges we have. So I would say I'm not a techno-utopian, but I'm a techno-pragmatist.

I think we ought to take the world as it is and not as we would like to have it.

The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which hs to be acquired with difficulty.

In art as in politics we must deal with people as they are not as we wish them to be. Only by working with the real can you get closer to the ideal.