A Quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer
Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.
It's wonderful when music is intellectually stimulating. But ultimately it has to be a visceral experience.
A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.
Everyone wants to be safe. Well, I got news for you: You can't be safe. Life's not safe. Your work isn't safe. When you leave the house, it isn't safe. The air you breathe isn't going to be safe, not for very long. That's why you have to enjoy the moment.
Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.
If you challenge multiculturalism you are seen to be a racist. But it's a political philosophy that needs to be looked at. If you don't, you're taking it on trust, which is intellectually dishonest.
I'm just sick of the way things are. We're in an age in which we can't live without accepting the logic of the market. Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy... What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us.
Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.
All of the members of my new team have displayed in their work a strong sense of pragmatism that I promote... The backgrounds of principal officials are diverse, they all share a common commitment to our country, our territory and our people and agree with my governing philosophy.
Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.
Idealism without pragmatism is impotent. Pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism.
I really do love psychology and philosophy but I'm no professional at these things. Because I love seeing the true side of humanity, as I've continued that, I have ultimately lent towards philosophy and psychology but it is not something in which I try to study.
I tend not to approach things intellectually at first. Maybe after the fact i can look at it and see ultimately what it's doing. I start with the characters and their inner lives.
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
Safe sex, safe music, safe clothing, safe hair spray, safe ozone layer. Too late! Everything that's been achieved in the history of mankind has been achieved by not being safe.
Related Authors
Alan Lightman Quotes
American
Physicist
Albert Einstein Quotes
German
Physicist
Brian Greene Quotes
American
Physicist
Freeman Dyson Quotes
American
Physicist
Gregory Benford Quotes
American
Physicist
James Clerk Maxwell Quotes
Scottish
Physicist
Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes
American
Physicist
Leonard Mlodinow Quotes
American
Physicist
Lisa Randall Quotes
American
Physicist
Michio Kaku Quotes
American
Physicist
Murray Gell-Mann Quotes
American
Physicist
Niels Bohr Quotes
Danish
Physicist
Richard P. Feynman Quotes
American
Physicist
Roger Penrose Quotes
English
Physicist
Stephen Hawking Quotes
English
Physicist
Werner Heisenberg Quotes
German
Physicist