pragmatism

The actor passed him his cigarette case. "No, you must tell us all about it. One should always be reminded of the fact that even in this best of worlds the blood still flows freely.""The Dead Jew

There's no alternative to being yourself. Accept it, honour it, value it - and get on with it.

The ways of the heart are complex._ He looked out at the ocean again. __he waves churn and break upon the rocks, Talon. So do human feelings. Passion can be a man__ undoing. With passion must come wisdom; otherwise, your enemies have a weapon to use against you.

Belief is a wonderful way to pass the time until the facts come in.

Defined simply, narcissism means excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism means excessive focus on work, achievement, and the practical concerns of life; and restlessness means an excessive greed for experience, an overeating, not in terms of food but in terms of trying to drink in too much of life...And constancy of all three together account for the fact that we are so habitually self-absorbed by heartaches, headaches, and greed for experience that we rarely find the time and space to be in touch with the deeper movements inside of and around us.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.

A painting shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.

Lovers tend to be philosophical, achievers are practical.

Pragmatism is good prevention for problems.

An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.

The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.

It is OK to say 'no'.It is OK to say 'I will think about it'.It is OK to say 'I will try'.It is NOT OK to make promises you cannot keep.

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.

Der Pragmatismus ersetzt uns alles, was früher die gro_en Ideen, die Ideologien und Religionen, der Glaube an Friede, Menschenrechte und Demokratie zu bieten hatten. Der Pragmatismus hält uns davon ab, zu Verbrechern zu werden, oder er macht uns zu solchen, wenn es nötig ist. Er legitimiert das Bestehen von Rechtssystem, Familie und Arbeit, er lässt uns nett sein und empfiehlt, sich ein angenehmes _u_eres zu erwerben. Nachdem wir uns aller Zwänge nach und nach erledigt haben, sorgt ein einziger Betreuer für uns: Pragmatismus.

We make versions, and true versions make worlds.

In meetings philosophy might work,on the field practicality works.

In the pragmatist, streetwise climate of advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical, 'life' is one among a whole series of discredited totalities. We are invited to think small rather than big _ ironically, at just the point when some of those out to destroy Western civilization are doing exactly the opposite. In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it. The West finds itself faced with a full-blooded metaphysical onslaught at just the historical point that it has, so to speak, philosophically disarmed. As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith.