Browsing Topic Best Pragmatists Quotes

Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

I would not say that I was, these days, a ‘student’ of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.

The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.

No more verbally incomprehensible no more devoid of the vision thing and no more the cautious pragmatist proudly displaying the virtues of tradition and the advantages of biological seniority.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

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

Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.

I use that as my responsibility on the show, to be the pragmatist.

pragmatist that I am, I always meet necessity with enthusiasm.

All of Robert Caro’s biographies are exceptional, in part because of Caro’s fundamental ambivalence about power. He sees its necessity and use for getting things done, even as he is often repelled by watching power at close range. His masterpiece on Robert Moses, The Power Broker, describes the evolution of Moses from idealist to pragmatist as he became one of the most powerful figures in the 20th century.

A pragmatist is concerned with results, not reality.

Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

Great leaders are pragmatists who can deal with difficult realities but still have the optimism and courage to act.

Somebody who sticks to his guns can be called a stubborn person or a principled person, it depends on whether you like his ideas or not. You can call somebody whose ideas you don’t like an ideologist or a person of ideas. You can call somebody whose actions you don’t like a pragmatist if you like them, or an opportunist if you don’t.

Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.

I’d describe myself as a pragmatist tinged with idealism.