Quotes About Realism

Hope is not the basis for policy. Wise policymakers analyze major issues such as immigration carefully and look at facts and probabilities instead of just hoping for the best.

The wise policymaker doesn't assume that any policy adopted in good faith will have good results. Instead, he or she weighs the likely outcome of any new policy based on facts and experience - not sentiments and dreams.

You have to show reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

I wouldn't go across the street to see a Bouguereau. His pictures look false; he does not get the truth of what he wishes to represent. His light is not outdoor light; his works are waxy and artificial. They are extremely near being frauds.

There's a part of me that wishes no one knew anything about me, but it's just not realistic.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

Our nation's military is effective because it is nonpartisan, relies heavily on science and technology, and takes the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be.

Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

I mean, I think it's a two-way relationship: I think you should not have too much faith in your own rationality. You should not have too much faith in the rationality of, you know, anybody else either. We all learn together about the way the world is, and I think it's a sort of antidote to wishful thinking of all kinds.

Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

I really like supernatural stories, but, to me, 'Witches of East End' is really grounded. It's not just going for the magic tricks and keeping it superficial and action-y.

If you believe in romance, and if you believe in marriage, you also have to believe in divorce. It's like, with 'Getting On,' a lot of people say, 'I don't want to watch that. It's so dark.' But you can't just want to go to weddings and children's birthday parties. You've got to witness it all.

I always pull from something I know really well. Because I would never want to write about something that I hadn't experienced or that I hadn't witnessed happen to somebody else because it wouldn't be genuine.

I guess I've kind of recognized what my worth is and what my specific brand of humor is. And that's not necessarily being the guy who's super witty and saying a joke every second. I'm the guy who you throw in a bizarre scenario, and I'll play it as real as possible.

Where I grew up, in Aldgate, east London, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, I saw lots that was real - the bankers with their briefcases, the man next door with five wives, the illegal immigrants in Flat 5. I'm from a world you rarely see on screen, and I want to show it off.

I burp, I fart. I'm a real woman.

I like to make the best of what I have. I'm not a supermodel, clearly. I'm not a makeup artist. I'm a real woman.

We like to imagine that women would do a better job of ruling the world - and I'm one of those optimists - but women aren't a superior kind of life form just because of our gender. We're awesome but not perfect. We're human. Just like men.

Theoretical principals must sometimes give way for the sake of practical advantages.

The problem with people who live in a world of speeches and books and theories is they don't know how to fix things in the real world when they go wrong. They feign ignorance, blame others, and make another eloquent speech.

Good intentions and grand theories do not make a good programme. Programmes work best when they're based on a detailed und­er­standing of the problem being solved and how they are implemented on the ground.

Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws.

They say in the Middle East a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience.

People will like to say that 'Eastern Promises' is brutal, but the only reason they say that is because the scenes stick with them. They are realistic. They are in-your-face and you see the consequences. It's not a bunch of quick editing cuts.