Realist Quotes - Page 8

• It's time that we acknowledge the wisdom women have acquired by managing the chaos of daily life. Women are realists, the glue that holds society together. They bring a reverence to life that's instinctual, not just intellectual.

  Teresa Heinz

  Intellectual, Together, Glue

  9 Copy quote

• World unity is the wish of the hopeful, the goal of the idealist and the dream of the romantic. Yet it is folly to the realist and a lie to the innocent.

  Don Williams

  Dream, Lying, Goal

  15 Copy quote

• Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.

  Stephen Hawking

  Science, Worry, Technique

  25 Copy quote

• The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result.

  Donald Harington

  Writing, New Orleans, Justice

  4 Copy quote

• Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.

  Esther Perel

  Passion, People, Intensity

  Esther Perel (2009). “Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence”, p.3, Harper Collins

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Experience has proved that there is no difference between a so-called realist painting - of a landscape, for example - and an abstract painting. They both have more or less the same effect on the observer.

  Gerhard Richter

  Differences, Abstract Painting, Example

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Oct 28, 2015

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

  Seth Godin

  Giving Up, Believe, Being Real

  Seth Godin (2015). “Poke The Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?”, p.29, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

  Clay Aiken

  Thinking, Afterlife, Littles

  8 Copy quote

• What reality was ever made by realists?

  Richard Flanagan

  Reality, Made

  Richard Flanagan (2014). “The Narrow Road to the Deep North: A novel”, p.32, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the realist, you have the sorry sight of the five senses deprived of their imagination.

  Robert Breault

  Inspirational, Sorry, Sight

  9 Copy quote

• That became my aesthetic - a very Chekhovian, American realist aesthetic in the tradition of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff. The perfectible, realist story that had these somewhat articulate characters, a lot of silence, a lot of obscured suffering, a lot of manliness, a lot of drinking, a lot of divorces. As my writing went on, I shed a lot of those elements.

  Jess Row

  Drinking, Character, Divorce

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am certainly open to the idea that this might be used to explain other philosophical categories besides knowledge. I have some real sympathy with the work of those moral realists who have tried to give naturalistic accounts of human flourishing, and who offer accounts of right action in such terms. (I suppose this is more evidence that I really do have deep affinities with Aristotle!)

  Hilary Kornblith

  Real, Philosophical, Ideas

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It always felt like I had to be a realist.

  Jack Tatum

  Felt

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• While I support a more comprehensive bill and hope a more extensive package will eventually past the Senate, I also am a realist and know that we must not let the perfect bill be the enemy of real reform.

  John McCain

  Real, Past, Perfect

  4 Copy quote

• Poetry, which is our relation to the senses, enables us to retain a living relationship to all things. It is the quickest means of transportation to reach dimensions above or beyond the traps set by the so-called realists. It is a way to learn levitation and travel in liberated continents, to travel by moonlight as well as sunlight.

  Anais Nin

  Mean, Levitation, Way

  16 Copy quote

• men are not realists - only women are.

  Mae West

  Men

  Mae West (1959). “Goodness Had Nothing to Do with it: Autobiography”, Chelsea House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• First, I was an idealist (that was early - fools are born, not made, you know); next I was a realist; now I am a pessimist, and, by Jove! if things get much worse I'll become a humorist.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Next, Fool, Firsts

  Ellen Glasgow (1900). “The Descendant”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not sexist, I'm just a realist.

  Adam Carolla

  Sexist

  5 Copy quote

• The apprentice realist uses line as a net to capture his prey, an imitation of reality. But soon he becomes enchanted with line as a thing. It becomes a servant of his pleasure.

  Rene Huyghe

  Reality, Use, Lines

  7 Copy quote

• I like to think I'm some savage realist.

  Nick Frost

  Thinking, Savages

  4 Copy quote

• The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Winning, Unique

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2015). “The Mind of the Maker”, p.58, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Writing, Mirrors

  "Exclusive Interview: Colm Toibin Talks About His New Story Collection". Interview with Anis Shivani, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 20, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The realist lies for advantage. The fantasist lies to give his dreams a flavor of reality.

  Mason Cooley

  Dream, Lying, Reality

  5 Copy quote

• I'm a realist and a dreamer. There are certain things you can give certain people and certain things you can't.

  Amy Winehouse

  Giving, People, Dreamer

  19 Copy quote