Pragmatism Quotes

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

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

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

Blogging, writing conventional articles, and being science consultant and pocket protector ninja to various web portals and TV programs, quite often trying to promote the penicillin of hard data to people who had no interest in being cured of their ignorance.

~ Stephen L. Burns

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

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

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

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

~ Charles Darwin

The principle chore of brains is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing [the world] is advantageous so long as it... enhances an organism's chances for survival. Truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost.

~ Patricia Churchland

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions.

~ Stephen L. Carter

Every positive attempt was as a result of encouragement, every encouragement leads to success.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

You'll never grab the wonderful with your feet on the ground.

~ The Afters

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

Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.

~ Ron Suskind

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

What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power.

~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own, homeless and displaced in a future or a past which are not ours because they are always beyond our reach. The present is our right place, and we can lay hands on whatever it offers us.

~ Thomas Merton

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?

~ Shūsaku Endō

We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.

~ Fitzjames Stephen

Academics place much more importance on rigorous logic. There is also admiration in the profession for subtle reasoning. And mastery of the craft shows itself in the elegance of the intellectual super-structure…. The practitioner, on the other hand, uses economic theory only to the extent that he finds it useful in comprehending the problem at hand, so that practical courses of action will emerge which can be evaluated not merely in narrow economic cost-benefit terms, but by taking into account a wider range of considerations…. A practitioner is not judged by the rigour of his logic or by the elegance of his presentation. He is judged by results.

~ Goh Keng Swee

The author's projected intellectual climate nearly 500 years in the future proclaims itself too pragmatic to consider living well as important as material satisfaction. This reminds us, ironically, that choosing NOT to consider life's deeper questions is in itself a choice with profound and lasting consequences.

~ Bryan M. Litfin

Even the most pragmatic person fell victim at times to a longing for something other.

~ Kate Morton

The result always mattered more than the rhetoric.

~ Jeffrey Toobin

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

~ Adam Phillips

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