Top 100 Quotes About Pragmatism: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Pragmatism

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'

Edward Abbey

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. WIth both trepidation and relief, I abandoned pragmatism in favor of magnetism.

Tama J. Kieves

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. Pursue your passion, and everything will fall into place. This is not being romantic. This is the highest order of pragmatism.

Gabrielle Giffords

#10. The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.

Charles Sanders Peirce

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Our platform is crafted by Democrats but it is not about partisanship, its about pragmatism.

Cory Booker

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. Pragmatism, consumerism, self-help moralism, and narcissism are simply the symptoms of a disease that is, at its heart, theological:

Michael S. Horton

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. Pragmatism reflects a society that has no time to remember and meditate.

Max Horkheimer

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.

Jonah Goldberg

#25. Like two figures in the medieval Morality play, Pragmatism and Morality spar in the boxing ring of my brain.

John Kennedy Toole

#26. A ministry based on pragmatism is built on sand regardless of whether it is more traditional or contemporary.

Michael S. Horton

#27. Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.

Danny Strong

#28. 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

#29. Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. Pragmatism avails a savior far more than aestheticism.

Ted Chiang

#33. She dominated his thinking nonetheless. Cassian believed neither pity nor pragmatism explained it.

Alexander Freed

#34. They never could entirely control preternaturals. It's your pragmatism. Your kind cannot be persuaded by faith; pure logic must be applied.

Gail Carriger

#35. One thing I've always liked about the military is there's a certain amount of pragmatism.

Phil Klay

#36. Anger flared through him, but anger was unproductive so he twisted it into pragmatism while he searched for a flaw.

Victoria Schwab

#37. You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man's vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism.

Mary Doria Russell

#38. [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

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. Extremists on the left tend to be just as critical of pragmatism as extremists on the right.

Richard M. Nixon

#48. 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

#49. In this dismissal of origins we see the new pragmatism.

Sherry Turkle

#50. He had that brand of pragmatism that would find her the first brewing tea after Armageddon.

Clive Barker

#51. Never let a passion for the perfect take precedence over pragmatism.

Walter Isaacson

#52. My grandparents forgave each other with the pragmatism of lovers in a plummeting airplane. There

Michael Chabon

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

Greg Egan

#54. Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.

Daniel Bell

#55. 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

#56. Pragmatism is nothing without imagination; and imagination is wasted without pragmatism

Robert Holdstock

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. One should not consider that the great principles of freedom end at your own frontiers, that as long as you have freedom, let the rest have pragmatism. No! Freedom is indivisible and one has to take a moral attitude towards it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#61. ROS: Why don't you go and have a look?
GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer?

Tom Stoppard

#62. How we present ourselves at any given time is dependent on the situation. We constantly balance the tension of high aspirations with the pragmatism of realistic expectations. The key is to represent ourselves in such a way that we can fulfill the expectations we create.

Marian Deegan

#63. The perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#64. The originals are not original, but that Emersonian irony yield to the Emersonian pragmatism that the inventor knows how to borrow.

Harold Bloom

#65. Pragmatism and subjectivism obscure the reality of the truth. They engage the mind, but they make it the servant of our desires and our work. But they can't answer which desires I should pursue and which work is worthwhile.

John Piper

#66. I like to say that Bobby Fischer was the greatest player ever. But what made Fischer a genius was his ability to blend an American freshness and pragmatism with Russian ideas about strategy

Bruce Pandolfini

#67. For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot.

Michael Hayden

#68. Pragmatism was a sword that cut through such knots; an action was to be judged by its consequences alone.

R.A. MacAvoy

#69. By learning to see and appreciate beauty, we learn to reject self-interested pragmatism. If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple.

Pope Francis

#70. If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.

William James

#71. Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism.

Richard M. Nixon

#72. -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

#73. Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.

Max Horkheimer

#74. While war for love is inspiring in legends and epic poems, we must be governed by cynical pragmatism.

James L. Cambias

#75. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor brought critical qualities to the high court that not everybody thinks are qualities - I happen to think they are - her pragmatism and her state craft.

Joe Biden

#76. We may be tainted with pragmatism, but it only needs a clash of personalities to remind us of our principles.

Hilary Mantel

#77. When Emily Dickinson writes, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul," she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

Terry Tempest Williams

#78. It might be added that the concept 'doctrines of men' [WCF 1.10] now arguably includes behaviourism, pragmatism, dynamic equivalence, and modern textual criticism.

J. Cammenga

#79. Think about everything you read and everything you see. The one thing we can learn from all the horrible things that have happened in the last 15-20 years is that hysteria is the last thing we need. Cool thinking, pragmatism, and analytical thought are most important at this point.

Greg Proops

#80. 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

#81. Nations, like people, are often more pragmatic than they know or can explain.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#82. 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

#83. 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

#84. It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

Cesare Beccaria

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. Books and minds only work when they're open.

James Dewar

#88. I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.

Abraham Lincoln

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. 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

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. 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