#Pragmatism Quotes

“Honesty is not the best policy - merely the safest”

“Don't argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”

“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”

“It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.”

“I've got to confess I'm a pragmatic optimist myself.”

“A world united is better than a world divided, but a world divided is better than a world destroyed.”

“I'd prefer to be right than consistent.”

“The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.”

“Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.”

“Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.”

“Tolerance is an admirable intellectual gift; but it is of little worth in politics.”

“The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience. [On diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China]”

“A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.”

“A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.”

“The United States abd usually be reiled on to do the right thing, but only after they have tried all the other alternatives.”

“You know, in war, you don't have to be nice. You only have to be right.”

“The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for to be true means only to perform this marriage-function.”

“Truth in our ideas means their power to work.”

“From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.”

“Truth is what works.”

“Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse. Untrammeled reasoning is the indulgence of the philosopher, of the dreamer of sweet dreams.”

“Truth is something that happens to an idea.”

“We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.”

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

“Never stand so high upon a principle that you cannot lower it to suit the circumstances.”

“Americans are a wonderful people: They will always do the right thing--after exhausting every other possible alternative.”

“[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.”

“Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.”

“It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done until everything can be done.”

“Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.”

“Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.”

“You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.”

“I don't know that I could draw one that's perfect. But I'd rather by approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.”

“If it works, it's true.”

“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.”

“We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.”

“If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender.”

“I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.”

“It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.”

“It's not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli. I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever's gonna make you achieve your goal.”

“The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.”

“In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.”

“Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction.”

“If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.”

“I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread. The other system has been tried and found wanting”

“I don't really care about being right, I just care about success. I don't mind being wrong, and I'll admit that I'm wrong a lot. It doesn't really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.”

“I don't really care about being right, I just care about success.”

“Die-hard conservatives thought that if I couldn't get everything I asked for, I should jump off the cliff with the flag flying-go down in flames. No, if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I'm trying to get ... I'll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the future.”

“Sometimes you have to make a movie to make money.”

“My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.”