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Pragmatism Quotes
"Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood."
24
"Spirituality cannot be an excuse for not making money!!! Just a justification for failure!"
22
"I've found that lifting the lid with your foot is the most thorough and least gross path to two minutes of peace of mind."
19
"Over a lifetime of dealing with difficult women, I have learned it is often better to give into their demands immediately."
19
"Fair play is all well and good. But knowing how to kick 'em in the balls can get you out of a jam 9 times out of 10."
17
"All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them."
16
"It is better to be a pragmatist than a lunatic."
15
"Pragmatism is good prevention for problems."
13
"Sufism is, in operation, pragmatic."
13
"I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not."
11
"Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering."
11
"Honesty is the best policy. But insanity is a hell of a lot more effective in court. So your set, McMullen."
10
"The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second."
9
"Her philosophy was, if it had a pulse, it could be killed. I didn't really have a philosophy, but I could see how talking with the school director would be difficult for her. If he said something she didn't like, chopping him to tiny pieces wouldn't exactly help me get into the school."
8
"You're just a huge romantic at heart, aren't you?""If there's cash involved, I'm anything you want me to be."
8
"Georgie, stop trying to resurrect the shoes. They were never alive in the first place."
8
"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
8
"Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that they don't much care is, paradoxically, that they know a lot. That is, they know one important thing: there is no evidence that head lice transmit disease."
7
"A lie that could help someone focus on his life was better than a hundred simple truths."
6
"Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum."
5
"High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible."
5
"We must consult our means rather than our wishes."
3
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