Realist Quotes - Page 3

• I don't want to be a pessimist. I'm a realist. One man's realist is another man's pessimist.

  Bill Maher

  Men, Want, Pessimist

  "Larry King Live", transcripts.cnn.com. September 14, 2010.

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• Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. I am talking about a gung-ho attitude that says 'we can change things here, we can achieve awesome goals, we can be the best. 'Spare me the grim litany of the 'realist;' give me the unrealistic aspirations of the optimist any day.

  Colin Powell

  Change, Attitude, Talking

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• The sorcerer is a Simple Realist: the world is real--but then so must consciousness be real since its effects are so tangible.

  Hakim Bey

  Real, Simple, World

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.22, Autonomedia

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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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• An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

  Peter Drucker

  Should, Cynic, Executives

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• I am a great realist in all aspects of life. Whatever I can do ... here it is.

  Olga Korbut

  Aspects Of Life, Can Do, I Can

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• It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Strong, Justice, Unjust

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “Man's Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and Social Existence”, p.24, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• I'm a realist. I like to put it in business terms. I ran three different corporations my way and I was successful. But I'm an older guy who is on his way out so they brought me in as a consultant for the new, up-and-coming CEO. I'm here for him.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Basketball, Successful, Guy

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• You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Men, Cynical, May

  Sydney J. Harris (1953). “Strictly personal”

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• I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. And my reality is that we live in a multifaceted, multicultural world. And maybe once we stop labeling ourselves, then maybe everyone else will.

  Octavia Spencer

  Reality, World, Optimist

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• I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Mean, People

  Malcolm X (1992). “By any means necessary”, Pathfinder Pr

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• I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

  Aretha Franklin

  People, Accepting

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• The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at it's best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Strong, Humble, Men

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• This may sound trite, but bad things happen to good people, and when you're facing terrorism, natural disaster, you can have every wonderful plan in place, but I am a realist.

  Warren Rudman

  People, Sound, May

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• If you are a novelist of a certain type of termperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too bad a novelist except he was a Realist.

  John Barth

  Novelists, World, Crafts

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• A strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Strong, Men, Idealist

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• I can be fairly optimistic, but I'm probably more a realist, I think. I mean, optimism's an interesting quality, isn't it, because I'm always slightly dubious as to what's behind it?

  Guy Pearce

  Optimistic, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The realists do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Art, Past

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• Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.

  Agatha Christie

  Liars, Men, Eyelashes

  Agatha Christie (1951). “Dame Agatha abroad”

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• Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning . One orients one's attitude toward the either by or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Morning, Attitude, Reading

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (2002). “Miscellaneous Writings of G.W.F. Hegel”

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• I'm a realist and I always have been.

  Jackie Joyner-Kersee

  Has Beens

  "Five minutes with Jackie Joyner-Kersee". Interview With Julie Deardorff, www.chicagotribune.com. May 2, 2012.

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• I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

  James Earl Jones

  Want

  "The Voice of Triumph". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 29, 1996.

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• Women decide the larger questions of life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because they are divinely inspired, not because they practise a magic inherited from savagery, but simply and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance what most men could not see with searchlights and telescopes.... They are the supreme realists of the race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Race, Magic

  In Defense of Women, rev. ed., pt. 1, ch. 5 (1922)

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• Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.

  William Gibson

  Dream, Jobs, Work

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• I am a realist. I expect miracles.

  Wayne Dyer

  Miracle

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