Realism Quotes

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.

~ James Madison

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist real

~ Vera Nazarian

When love carries us away on its brittle wings, we are too intoxicated to comprehend its power. We just want to soar and feel its adventurous spirit. The realistic aspect of love is not that romantic.

~ Balroop Singh

You'd like Freedom, Truth, and Justice, wouldn't you, Comrade Sergeant?' said Reg encouragingly.'I'd like a hard-boiled egg,' said Vimes, shaking the match out.There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended.'In the circumstances, Sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher--''Well, yes, we could,' said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of papers in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. 'But...well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.

~ Terry Pratchett

To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey—and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.

~ George Gaylord Simpson

We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.

~ Will Durant

Some people are optimists. Some people are pessimists. I'm just a realist who believes that some things are worth fighting for.

~ C. Joybell C.

Some people see the liquid and thing half full. Others only see the air and think half empty. Sometimes I get the sense Chatham sees it all, which is kind of terrifying. I don't know if I want him to see me--the real me.

~ Mccall Hoyle

Nothing wrong with a little optimism, long as it doesn’t set policy....

~ James S.a. Corey

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you'd be surprised how much pleasure you get from material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

~ Donald Miller

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.

~ Richard M. Weaver

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

~ Stephen King

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life.

~ Timothy J. Keller

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.

~ Flannery O'connor

When you feel hatred towards your life, hate it. See how it will actually do something to your life.

~ Ade Santi

Don’t let realism keep you from doing what you feel you need to do, even if you think it’s hopeless.

~ A.j. Darkholme

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

~ Oscar Wilde

Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.

~ Charles Bukowski

With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.

~ Leo Tolstoy

The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.

~ Anaïs Nin

Mental and emotional freedom is not the denial of truth — it’s the recognition that truth isn't something we need to run from or be afraid of.

~ T.k. Coleman

The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but you must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then l lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold.

~ George Friedman

The standards of judgement must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be.

~ Saul D. Alinsky

Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.

~ Ron Suskind

When we get to Heaven, we can try a monarchy, perhaps. John Hay

~ John Taliaferro

Any boy who'd love a sailboat-patterned, swimsuited sausage who tames rabid foxes would be wonderful. And impossible.

~ Fanny Britt

For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied realism.

~ George Lakoff

And you'd be left there like a fucking dumpling. You'd be standing there. A fucking dumpling man I'm telling ye.

~ James Kelman

The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

~ Harlan Ellison

You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening.

~ Paula Fox

to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, something else is hurting you - that's why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.

~ Charles Bukowski

Yes, you may love them to death, but are they willing to love you to life?

~ Kierra C.t. Banks

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

~ David Brin

Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.

~ Charles Bukowski

No ghosts need

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them -- are ruinous!

~ William Dean Howells

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.

~ Jane Austen

Realism arises from the maturity of the minds, while Idealism arises from their conformity.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think.

~ Guy De Maupassant

Here's the most startling irony I know in film history: Antonioni, who is often denigrated by left-wing critics as a formalist and aesthete gives us radical realism through the long take, and what he gives us--this is his metaphysical wager--is real outside the film, off the set, beyond the camera and underneath the surface of everyday life.

~ Frank Lentricchia