A Quote by Robert Hass
Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.
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You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.
Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Great leaders are pragmatists who can deal with difficult realities but still have the optimism and courage to act.
Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.
I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.
There are libertarians who are survivalists, who live in the middle of nowhere and who are ready for the world to end. And then there are pragmatists, and I would consider myself to be a pretty pragmatic person.
One of the biggest things immigrant kids oftentimes feel is this big disparity between our parents and us. And our parents are staunch pragmatists, and I consider myself to be an optimist.
Many so-called pragmatists want nothing to do with space exploration or other kinds of ambitious endeavours that don't have a clear payoff. This mentality is hugely damaging to our success as a civilization. Our desire to understand the universe is kindled by curiosity and wonder, and this has fuelled countless scientific breakthroughs.
Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles.
The problem with describing poets as legislators is that at that level of politics - politics as political invention - poets have no special skills and are not apt to.
We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.
Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.
I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.
In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.
Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.
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