#pragmatism

I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there. ↗

— David Miliband

#always #anything #clash #clear #closed

Things aren't like this," he kept repeating. "It shouldn't be this way." As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, "right" universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence that I found myself believing him, believing, for example, in the possibility of that other life in which Vina had never left and we were making our lives together, all three of us, ascending together to the stars. Then he shook his head, and the spell broke. He opened his eyes, grinning ruefully. As if he knew his thoughts had infected mine. As if he knew his power. "Better get on with it," he said. "Make do with what there is. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#parallel-universe #pragmatism #reality #life

The author's projected intellectual climate nearly 500 years in the future proclaims itself too pragmatic to consider living well as important as material satisfaction. This reminds us, ironically, that choosing NOT to consider life's deeper questions is in itself a choice with profound and lasting consequences. ↗

— Bryan M. Litfin

#philosophy #pragmatism #life

Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. ↗

— Richard M. Rorty

#relativism #truth #contemporary

It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#pragmatism #values #love

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#hope #optimism #pessimism #pragmatism #worst

Dynamic/Active vs. Static/Passive. The Biblical statement, '...and with knowledge gain understanding, and with understanding gain wisdom'- NT (passim), speaks to an active experiential involvement necessary on our part in producing a state of dynamic pragmatism. To my understanding, wisdom is knowledge understood and applied in our daily lives where the-rubber-meets-the-road". ~R. Alan Woods [2013] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#dynamic-pragmatism #knowledge-understood #r-alan-woods #r-alan-woods

Whatever the truth is, I don’t see how it will help me get food on the table. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#food

Books and minds only work when they're open. ↗

— James Dewar

#intelligence #left-is-right-and-right-is-wrong #liberalism #open-mindedness #practicality

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism. ↗

— Daniel Bell

#america #been #discussion #europe #grubby