Quotes About Pragmatism

In fact, Hutchins continues, by splitting the human lifeworld in the way they do, positivism and pragmatism leave us with "a colossal confusion of means and ends. Wealth and power become the ends of life," because the realm of value is the realm of opinion, in which I seek nothing more than easy justifications for my desires.

Political life must be taken as you find it.

Perhaps we're not the greater good, but we are the lesser of evils.

Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.

Pragmatism is cold comfort when millions of lives are in the balance," conceded Boucher. "It's a little like saying, 'Sorry, I can't rescue you from drowning until I finish waxing my car.'" The president chuckled

These are not simply naive, lonely, desperate women who'll take love in whatever form they can get it. In fact, they are pragmatic about their reasons for choosing to not only live with a secret but be a secret.

The pure and sinless did not exist, or else died unnoticed and with no obituary. The idea seemed persuasive. Those who merited obituaries had usually achieved things, fought for their ideals, and when locked in battle, it wasn't easy to remain entirely honest and upright. Today's battles were all for material gain, anyway. The crazy idealist was extinct – survived by the crazy pragmatist Ã¢â'¬Â¦

In the old days she would have dug in her heels, but she was old and canny enough to realize there was no point starting battles you could never win.

I am not an optimist. I'm a very serious possibilist. It's a new category where we take emotion apart and we just work analytically with the world.

The most surprising thing, honestly, is that so few Americans know about the orphan trains. I was also surprised at the resilience and fortitude of the riders I met, their pragmatism and grace. I don't know whether this is a Midwestern trait or simply a human one.

Idealism doesn't prevent problems.

I learned to get what I wanted through any means necessary, and sometimes that means you have to get your hands dirty.

I don't have any particular loyalties to one technique or another. I'm just trying to use the best for the job.

We shouldn't persuade people that we can simply conjure up the sun and the moon: at the most, we can deliver a telescope.

I'm just sick of the way things are. We're in an age in which we can't live without accepting the logic of the market. Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy... What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

The pessimist looks down and hits his head. The optimist looks up and loses his footing. The realist looks forward and adjusts his path accordingly.

The clash was unsatisfactory to everybody. Therefore, the pragmatist claimed, we must reach a livable compromise. This approach puts the pragmatist on the side of the aggressor, though they don't advocate aggression. As a criticism of pragmatism, you can say that it is totally amoral, and every amoral system is on the side of the immoral. But the pragmatist is impersonal about force. Someone wants to bash your skull in, reach a livable compromise: tell him to break one leg. [NFW 69]

Throughout his career, he operated in the realm of the possible, taking the world as it was, not as he wished it to be, and he often inveighed against a dogmatic insistence upon perfection.

If you hear hoof beats, you look for horses, not zebras.

We need to make fast decisions here. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Qua dogmatist, the Nazi holds faith to be superior to logic. Qua activist, he dismisses logic in favor of action. Qua pragmatist, he is free to endorse contradictions, provided they "work." Qua relativist, he rejects the absolutism of the Law of Identity. And, qua subjectivist, the Nazi simply wipes out logic by giving its name to his random, "Aryan" feelings.

Man, Aristotle held, must first grasp the appropriate facts of reality; on this basis, he can then set the goals and course of his action. Pragmatism represents a total reversal of this progression. For the pragmatist, the order is: man acts; he invents forms of thought to satisfy the needs of his action; reality adapts itself accordingly (except when, inexplicably, it resists). First, action—second, thought—third, reality.

One British writer describes these big bankers and industrialists, who prided themselves on their "practicality" in backing Hitler, as "too innocent for politics." William Shirer says that they were "politically childish." In fact, their "innocence" was anti-intellectuality, and their "political childishness" was (in effect) philosophical pragmatism.