Top 100 Pragmatism's Quotes
#1. [Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
William James
#2. Even the most pragmatic person fell victim at times to a longing for something other.
Kate Morton
#3. I concede his greater ingenuity. It bodes well for his endeavor. Pragmatism avails a savior far more than aestheticism. I wonder what he intends to do after he's saved the world. I comprehend the Word, and the means by which it operates, and so I dissolve.
Ted Chiang
#4. Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.
Max Horkheimer
#5. The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.
Robert Dallek
#6. Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking.
John Dewey
#7. As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.
Diana Gabaldon
#8. Design is not for philosophy it's for life.
Issey Miyake
#9. It was not the flesh we would have chosen, but I had long since given up dreams of resembling anyone from the movies and, with the pragmatism of the perfectly average, come to realise that this was me and that was fine.
Kate Griffin
#10. Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.
Cornel West
#11. You have a fuchsia heart. And a fuchsia heart doesn't die, it simply bides its time, taking a backseat to pragmatism, all while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence, teal gables, turquoise earrings, and saffron scarves.
Barbara Delinsky
#12. The Citizen's Petition reflects Vermont's spirit of pragmatism and across-the-board cooperation. I applaud the 'Campaign to Fix the Debt' for calling attention to one of the country's most pressing problems, our ballooning national debt, and for urging policymakers to find practical solutions.
Peter Welch
#13. Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.
Ron Suskind
#14. The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.
Iain M. Banks
#16. The strongest streak in the American character is a fierce pragmatism that mistrust blind ideology of every stripe and insists on finding what really works.
Eric Liu
#17. There's no alternative to being yourself. Accept it, honour it, value it - and get on with it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
#18. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist.
G.K. Chesterton
#19. There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.
Richard M. Rorty
#20. You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man's vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism.
Mary Doria Russell
#21. Anger flared through him, but anger was unproductive so he twisted it into pragmatism while he searched for a flaw.
Victoria Schwab
#24. One thing I've always liked about the military is there's a certain amount of pragmatism.
Phil Klay
#25. Ordinary life goes on
that has saved many a man's reason.
Graham Greene
#26. Every positive attempt was as a result of encouragement, every encouragement leads to success.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#27. A matter of pragmatism; chemically knocking someone senseless is usually quieter, less messy and less risky to the assailant than killing them.
Greg Egan
#28. -believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.
Anne Fadiman
#29. The ways of the heart are complex." He looked out at the ocean again. "The waves churn and break upon the rocks, Talon. So do human feelings. Passion can be a man's undoing. With passion must come wisdom; otherwise, your enemies have a weapon to use against you.
Raymond E. Feist
#30. Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It's built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don't even see. It's a messy business, bringing peace into the world.
Bono
#31. Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?
Graham Greene
#32. 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
Jeremy Robinson
#33. Of them all, he had been the most perfectly made, a man whose deeply romantic core was encased in a brutally simple box which consisted of instinct and pragmatism.
Stephen King
#34. Western science is approaching a paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions, one that will change our concepts of reality and of human nature, bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science, and reconcile the differences between Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism.
Stanislav Grof
#35. Pragmatism is nothing without imagination; and imagination is wasted without pragmatism
Robert Holdstock
#36. An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.
William James
#37. Can you analyze our relationship in the light of Silvermanian pragmatism?" I said.
"I love you because I find it compelling to be loved so entirely. You love me
because as long as you do you can believe in romantic love.
Robert B. Parker
#38. I believe in steel swords, gold coins, and man's wits. ( ... ) And I believe there once were dragons. I've seen their skulls, after all.
George R R Martin
#39. Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.
Daniel Bell
#41. My grandparents forgave each other with the pragmatism of lovers in a plummeting airplane. There
Michael Chabon
#42. Never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.
Walter Isaacson
#43. He had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon.
Clive Barker
#44. In this dismissal of origins we see the new pragmatism.
Sherry Turkle
#45. When I first met Tony Blair in 1996, he was open and idealistic, keen to bring a breath of fresh air to government. But something happened - was it just the arrogance of power? - that narrowed Labour's vision from purposeful reform and investment, to peevish and petulant pragmatism.
Rory Bremner
#46. To put it most simply, the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment.
Mark A. Noll
#47. John Hay on Lincoln: "He always worked with things as they were, while never relinquishing the desire to make them better.
John Taliaferro
#48. Extremists on the left tend to be just as critical of pragmatism as extremists on the right.
Richard M. Nixon
#49. To be a saint or a man of too good a nature in today's pragmatic world, with everyone out to get the other fellow, was equivalent to being a fool, wasn't it?
Shusaku Endo
#50. Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
Karl Popper
#51. Do you know what I think?" Marcone said.
"You think we should shoot Nicodemus in the back at the first opportunity and let Michael dismember him."
"Yes."
I drew my gun. "Okay.
Jim Butcher
#53. Books and minds only work when they're open.
James Dewar
#54. Because I, Summer Johnson, Purveyor of Pragmatism, Lover of Logic, Ultimate Believer in the Rational, and Person Who Was Maybe Going To Die Soon, wanted to drown in someone.
Seth King
#55. From the earliest beginnings of Lyndon Johnson's political life - from his days at college when he had captured control of campus politics - his tactics had consistently revealed a pragmatism and a cynicism that had no discernible limits.
Robert A. Caro
#56. Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.
Pope Benedict XVI
#57. Our platform is crafted by Democrats but it is not about partisanship, its about pragmatism.
Cory Booker
#58. 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.
Jose Mujica
#59. However much you study, you cannot know without action.
A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man.
Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?
Saadi
#60. I would rather be erring on the side of common-sense pragmatism and doing everything possible so that I felt that no stone was left unturned in terms of trying to protect school children.
John Larson
#61. The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#62. Pursue your passion, and everything will fall into place. This is not being romantic. This is the highest order of pragmatism.
Gabrielle Giffords
#63. The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge ...
Sri Aurobindo
#64. One ever feels his twoness,
an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#65. I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.
Abraham Lincoln
#66. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
G.K. Chesterton
#67. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.
Margaret Chase Smith
#68. WIth both trepidation and relief, I abandoned pragmatism in favor of magnetism.
Tama J. Kieves
#69. Pragmatists are sometimes more prone to illusion than dreamers; when they fall for something, they fall hard, not knowing how to protect themselves, while we dreamers are more practiced in surviving the disillusionment that follows when we wake up from our dreams.
Azar Nafisi
#70. I am pragmatic. That which works, works, and theory can go screw itself. However, my pragmatism also extends to maintainability, which is why I also want it done well.
Linus Torvalds
#71. Pure pragmatism can't imagine a bold future. Pure idealism can't get anything done. It is the delicate blend of both that drives innovation.
Simon Sinek
#72. Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'
Edward Abbey
#73. Nations, like people, are often more pragmatic than they know or can explain.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#74. I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.
David Miliband
#75. 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.
Christina Baker Kline
#76. Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume
an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them.
John Dewey
#77. A ministry based on pragmatism is built on sand regardless of whether it is more traditional or contemporary.
Michael S. Horton
#78. They never could entirely control preternaturals. It's your pragmatism. Your kind cannot be persuaded by faith; pure logic must be applied.
Gail Carriger
#79. She dominated his thinking nonetheless. Cassian believed neither pity nor pragmatism explained it.
Alexander Freed
#80. Pragmatism avails a savior far more than aestheticism.
Ted Chiang
#81. First, guilt-tripping doesn't work as a campaigning strategy. If you make people feel bad about what they do, you must give them a realistic and feasible alternative. Second, pragmatism beats purism. Every time.
Mark Lynas
#82. The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical philosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that it guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved.
William James
#83. Dad had turned conservative, but not in the way of the demonologists who sold us out for tenure and crumbs. More like a man who spurns the false talk of revolution for the humbler mission of resurrecting one soul at a time.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#84. You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.
Richard Rorty
#85. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.
Charles Dickens
#87. 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.
Bono
#88. Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.
Danny Strong
#89. Americans will not and should not respond to a political creed that cherishes the past solely because it offers an excuse for shutting out the hard facts and difficult tasks of the present.
Nelson Rockefeller
#90. Like two figures in the medieval Morality play, Pragmatism and Morality spar in the boxing ring of my brain.
John Kennedy Toole
#91. Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.
Jonah Goldberg
#92. The actor passed him his cigarette case. "No, you must tell us all about it. One should always be reminded of the fact that even in this best of worlds the blood still flows freely."
"The Dead Jew
Hanns Heinz Ewers
#93. 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.
Chuck Wendig
#94. His track record of pragmatism, depth and candor all speak to a person who would find the Tea Party simplistic, opportunistic and misguided. Reagan was surrounded by some very smart people who gave him very sound advice. They were not wondering where certain countries are on the map.
Eugene Jarecki
#95. Pragmatism reflects a society that has no time to remember and meditate.
Max Horkheimer
#96. All of the members of my new team have displayed in their work a strong sense of pragmatism that I promote ... While the backgrounds of principal officials are diverse, they all share a common commitment to our country, our territory and our people and agree with my governing philosophy.
Donald Tsang
#97. We haven't shed our engineering pragmatism, so we accomplish things in the simplest manner possible. It helps with budget, obviously. We're not getting rich off web video, and we're supporting two families with our income, so we need to keep as much of the budget to ourselves.
Rhett McLaughlin
#98. They want me to do something, and I'll do it, or I won't do it, and it'll work or not, and I'll survive or not.
Jo Walton
#99. Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.
Bertrand Russell
#100. Pragmatism, consumerism, self-help moralism, and narcissism are simply the symptoms of a disease that is, at its heart, theological:
Michael S. Horton
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