Realism Quotes - Page 12

• I was doing something that the officials or art commission probably didn't consider important... I was experimenting with different kinds of realistic art, impressionism and the more decorative compositions of different forms of painting, which took away from the earlier photographic realism that I was doing.

  E. J. Hughes

  Art, Important, Different

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• We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our environment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago. But no purpose is served by post-mortems. With visionary zeal but the greatest realism, we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Should Have, Tasks, Purpose

  Gerald R. Ford (1973). “Selected speeches”, Desert Publications

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• As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic.

  Tommy Wiseau

  Directors, Actors, Plastic

  Interview with Steve Heisler, www.avclub.com. June 24, 2009.

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• What is noble, lyrical, tender in the upper level shown is also with the servants, scoundrels, and scamps, as in a distorting mirror. This contrast seems to me a most appealing musical theme--to show love in its noble and crude forms, romanticism and crass realism mixed as in everyday life.

  Stefan Zweig

  Mirrors, Musical, Everyday

  Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig (1977). “A Confidential Matter: The Letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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• I like my films to have a certain amount of realism - something that's thought provoking and intelligently written. More than the amount on the pay cheque, I look for a level of respectability as an actor.

  Arjun Rampal

  Thought Provoking, Looks, Actors

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• Dynamic ecstasy is absolute romanticism , absolute heroism . And here I return to my point. From my point of view, after the catastrophe which we feel and think is universal, a catastrophe resulting from an excess of useless dynamism of useless progress, of useless realism, of useless technology, after this an unattainable democracy is to be reached through the conception and realization of a new romanticism.

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  Technology, Thinking, Views

  "Heroic Reason" by Juan Ramon Jimenez (p. 231), 1957.

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• As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit - subliterature.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Moving, Years, Historical

  "Ursula K. Le Guin talks about genres, gender, and broadening fiction". Interview with Michael Cunningham, electricliterature.com. April 2, 2016.

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• Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it. With them morality was violated, but moral notions remained intact. The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality.

  Julien Benda

  Leader, Honor, Crowds

  "Treason of the Intellectuals". Book by Julien Benda, pp. 110-111, 1927.

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• Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art -- although it may possibly be very good journalism?

  Sherwood Anderson

  Art, Mean, Reality

  Sherwood Anderson (1947). “The Sherwood Anderson reader”

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• I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies.

  Camille Paglia

  Girl, Princess, White

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.12, Vintage

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• There are two strains, I think, in American playwriting, of importance. One is traditional narrative realism, which is definitely my strain, and then the other great contribution is American musical theater, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

  Tony Kushner

  Thinking, Two, Musical

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I use people's real voices because I want realism. So often I mention the actors' physicality because I want it to be like a real documentary.

  Ricky Gervais

  Real, Voice, People

  "The Award-Wining Comedy Drama Returns". Interview with James Rampton, www.rickygervais.com. April 15, 2014.

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• The geniuses who conduct the motion-picture business killed glamour when they decided that what the public wanted was not dream stuff, from which movies used to be made, but realism.

  Hedda Hopper

  Movie, Dream, Genius

  Hedda Hopper (1963). “the Whole Truth and Nothing But”

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• Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces.
  Realism was the death of art.
  Great art should come from the harmony of two lines.

  Arthur Wesley Dow

  Art, Space, Two

  "Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers" by Arthur Wesley Dow, Boston, 1899.

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• The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out.

  Gore Vidal

  Tourists, Done, Return

  "The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

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• Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying quantum theory in terms of our pictures in the everyday world. The general conclusion is that in quantum theory naive realism, although necessary at the level of observations, fails at the microscopic level.

  Ravi Gomatam

  Thinking, Everyday, World

  "Physics and Commonsense - Reassessing the connection in the light of quantum theory". arxiv.org. August 12, 2007.

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• In spite of the air of fablethe public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Reality, Air, Facts

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• You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

  George Santayana

  Philosophy, Heart, Reality

  Durant Drake, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur Kenyon Rogers, George Santayana (1920). “Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the problem of knowledge”

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• All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

  Herman Melville

  Beautiful, Lying, Reality

  Herman Melville (2015). “Pierre or The Ambiguities: Works of Melville”, p.214, 谷月社

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• The physical world is meaningless tonight
  And there is no other.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Tonight, World

  Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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• Realism gives me the impression of a mistake. Violence alone escapes the feeling of poverty of those realistic experiences. Only death and desire have the force that oppresses, that takes one's breath away. Only the extremism of desire and death enable one to attain the truth.

  Georges Bataille

  Mistake, Giving, Feelings

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• The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.

  Robert Greene

  Real, Facts, Intense

  50 Cent, Robert Greene (2010). “The 50th Law”, p.46, Profile Books

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• For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end... such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own.

  C. Wright Mills

  Reality, Men, Talking

  "The Power Elite". Book by C. Wright Mills, 1956.

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• Characters on stage should be flat, like clothes in a fashion show: what you get should be no more than what you see. Psychological realism is repulsive, because it allows us to escape unpalatable reality by taking shelter in the “luxuriousness” of personality, losing ourselves in the depth of individual character. The writer's task is to block this manoeuvre, to chase us off to a point from which we can view the horror with a dispassionate eye.

  Elfriede Jelinek

  Fashion, Block, Character

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• I dream about speaking in big forums about issues that need to be spoken about. I dream about helping others who I know and love, helping them realize their dreams. I dream about being able to express myself through acting and writing, definitely. I dream about bringing more realism into the world. Sometimes I just feel like certain things are so glossed over and covered up and swept under the rug and I just want to bring them out.

  Alicia Keys

  Dream, Writing, Helping Others

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