Realism Quotes

Do you really want to make risotto to order when you have eight guests sitting there? No. It won't work. Most cookbooks won't tell you that. They will say make it and it will come out perfectly. They should tell you you're probably going to screw it up the first 10 times you make it.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

You get to a certain age and you're just glad to be there. I don't know what to add to that. It's fun. You have to be a realist, so you try to look for roles that are within the age you are.

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

Let us replace sentimentalism by realism and dare to uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and govern.

Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.

There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.

Leaders must not be naive. I used to say, "Liars shouldn't lie." What a sad waste of words that is! I found out liars are supposed to lie. That's why we call them liars - they lie! What else would you expect them to do?

The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it.

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations

Sometimes with a comedy it's just having the instinct of how real you play it and what level you want it.

We can rattle our sabers all we want but, realistically, we don't have troops for an invasion [Iran] and surgical strikes aren't going to work.

None of my characters are rich or famous, and the situations they find themselves in could happen to anyone.

A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed.

Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy on pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?

Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks.

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

Cut the Wings of your Hens and Hopes, lest they lead you a weary Dance after them.

I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat.

Look Toward the stars but keep your feet firmly on the ground.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.

I fear that, with our current veneration for the natural and the real, we have arrived at the opposite pole to all idealism, and have landed in the region of the waxworks.

it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.

I don't like realism. We already know the real facts about li[fe], most of the basic facts. I'm not interested in repeating what we already know. We know about sex, about violence, about murder, about war. All these things, by the time we're 18, we're up to here. From there on we need interpreters. We need poets. We need philosophers. We need theologians, who take the same basic facts and work with them and help us make do with those facts. Facts alone are not enough. It's interpretation.

The scholar may lose himself in schools, in words, and become a pedant; but when he comprehends his duties, he above all men is arealist, and converses with things.

Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile, or in the face of a threat of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but some more power.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano!

Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right.

Anyone who believes a growth rate in excess of 15% per annum over the long term is attainable should pursue a career in sales, but avoid one in mathematics.