Pragmatism Quotes

“Creativity is a high-falutin' word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday.”

“We must distinguish between what is desirable and what is possible.”

“In a world in which the price of calculation continues to decrease rapidly, but the price of theorem proving continues to hold its own or increase, elementary data analysis should be happy to stay away from theorems.”

“Sleep when you can. It's a free luxury.”

“Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.”

“The most important thing for a politician is to be able to get a job.”

“The best is the enemy of the good.”

“I don't think any of us know what is going to happen. I am not a pessimist. I am not an optimist. I am a realist, and I will wait and see what happens.”

“Have no fear of perfection; you'll never reach it.”

“The first law of politics is to be able to count.”

“I have no idées noires. I don't feel that the world is a particularly dark place. I'm a pragmatist.”

“We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this stuff. I want to solve problems.”

“I thought it was the moral thing to do, but it also was the practical thing. If we were going to be a great city, we had to do it.”

“The question is not whether this measure be good or bad, but whether it be a measure that can be passed.”

“The great beauty of the structure is that of utility.”

“The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol.”

“I don't care what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice.”

“The first principle of architecture is to get the weather out.”

“An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.”

“I just did it. It was a job. I was glad to have the work. There was no glory in it.”