top of page
"The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Realism quotes

"If I sound as if I'm always predicting ominous things, it's because I'm a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and you'll see what I mean."

"Reality may not be what you want it to be, but it is the reality you now must face. You can deny this reality and try to wish it away, or you can accept it and not waste any energy on wanting it to be different."

". . . nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are . . ."

"I don't need shoes. I need a night scope. You think they sell night scopes someplace here?"

"Their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be."
Explore more quotes by Bertrand Russell

"In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics."

"You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application."

"One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor."

"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."

"Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."

"In the modern world, however, love has another enemy more dangerous than religion, and that is the gospel of work and economic success. It is generally held, especially in America, that a man should not allow love to interfere with his career, and that if he does, he is silly. But in this as in all human matters a balance is necessary."

"The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf."

"When the qualities that now confer leadership have become universal, there will no longer be leaders and followers, and democracy will have been realized at last."

"If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships."

"A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal..."
bottom of page