Realist Quotes

I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist. ~ Anthony Jeselnik

Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there's little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why? ~ Cormac McCarthy

So-called 'realist' photography does not capture the 'what is.' Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example. ~ Jean Baudrillard

I was quite excited, but I was sure I wouldn't win the race. I am a realist. ~ Jean Alesi

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist.15 ~ Tad R. Callister

The Situational Character: A Critical Realist Perspective on the Human Animal" by Jon D. Hanson and David G. Yosifon, along with its companion piece, "The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture." Situationism ~ Charles Eisenstein

If you are a novelist of a certain type of temperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too bad a novelist, except he was a Realist. ~ John Barth

Kafka was a realist ~ Gyorgy Lukacs

Some people are optimists. Some people are pessimists. I'm just a realist who believes that some things are worth fighting for. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I don't write 'romance' stories, but character love stories, like the short story fiction published at Romantic4Ever.com and at WeddingNight.com, with romance of the heart and of adventure, in its many, many human varieties, as seen through the eyes and hearts and bodies of realist characters; whether about military special forces regiments, mail order brides in the outback, class-crossed samurai lovers, wealthy Victorian 'minorities,' or luscious vampires of another color. ~ Neale Sourna

Being a woman, I have found the road rougher than had I been born a man. Different defenses, different codes of ethics, different approaches to problems and personalities are a woman's lot. I have preferred to shun what is known as feminine wiles, the subterfuge of subtlety, reliance on tears and coquetry to shape my way. I am forthright, often blunt. I have learned to be a realist despite my romantic, emotional nature. I have no illusions that age, the rigors of my profession, disappointments, and unfulfilled dreams have not left their mark.

I am proud that I have carved my path on earth almost entirely by my own efforts, proud that I have compromised in my career only when I had no other recourse, when financial or contractual commitments dictated. Proud that I have never been involved in a physical liaison unless I was deeply attracted or in love. Proud that, whatever my worldly goods may be, they have been achieved by my own labors. ~ Joan Fontaine

I like presenting ambiguous situations. It seems to me a great part of our inner and outer lives are ambiguous, if we're honest about it. Maybe I'm a realist, in that respect. ~ Eric Basso

Any discussion between idealist and realist would never end. ~ Toba Beta

Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist. ~ Terry Pratchett

Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation wasn't his thing. If something really existed you, had to except it as a reality whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles Logic didn't give birth to a reality. Reality came first and the principles of logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky. ~ Haruki Murakami

Optimism was for children. Once you reached adulthood then you had to join the rest of the world as a realist - life was a bag of shit you were expected to pay for. ~ NikNak

Poetry is always dependent on realism, that you have to be a realist or you can't be a poet. Mrs. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The dreamers, those who misread the actual state of affairs and act upon their emotions, are often the source of the greatest mistakes in history - the wars that are not thought out, the disasters that are not foreseen ~ Robert Greene

But the loneliness was still on Danny and demanded an outlet.
'Here we sit,' he began at last.
' - broken-hearted,' Pilon added rhythmically.
'No, this is not a poem,' Danny said. 'Here we sit, homeless. We gave our lives for our country, and now we have no roof over our head.'
'We never did have,' Pilon added helpfully.
Danny drank dreamily until Pilon touched his elbow and took the bottle.
'That reminds me,' Danny said, 'of a story of a man who owned two whore-houses
' His mouth dropped open. 'Pilon! my little fat duck of a baby friend. I had forgotten! I am an heir! I own two houses.'
'Whore-houses?' Pilon asked hopefully. 'Thou art a drunken liar,' he continued.
'No, Pilon. I tell the truth. The viejo died. I am the heir. I, the favourite grandson.'
'Thou art the only grandson,' said the realist Pilon. ~ John Steinbeck

Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer. One orients one's attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In the language of the day it is customary to describe a certain sort of book as "escapist" literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even have the disastrous effect on the reader of taking him happily for a few hours out of his own real life in N.W.8. Why this should be a matter for regret I do not know; nor why realism in a novel is so much admired when realism in a picture is condemned as mere photography; nor, I might add, why drink and fornication should seem to bring the realist closer to real life than, say, golf and gardening. ~ A.A. Milne

I guess we need to keep adjusting our dreams to fit reality, because life is not going to cooperate. Maybe this makes me a defeatist, but I'd prefer to think of myself as realist. ~ Cassia Leo

You get to a certain age and you're just glad to be there. I don't know what to add to that. It's fun. You have to be a realist, so you try to look for roles that are within the age you are. ~ Clint Eastwood

Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left. ~ Truman Capote

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. ~ Walter Isaacson

This is forever." Pulling back to see her expression, Craig was gratified to see the surprise in her eyes. "You really think so?" she whispered back. "Aye," he told her as he kissed her sweet mouth. "I can't lose you again. No matter what happens I will fight like fuck to keep you." Rain gave him a slow, sweet, and slightly smug smile that made him laugh. "And so the realist becomes a romantic." He ~ Samantha Young

The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more. ~ Emile Zola

I have remarked elsewhere that I regard the Almighty as not a bad novelist, except that He is a realist. ~ John Barth

There's probably no one who's more of a realist than the unpopular loner. I have lived my life with the Three Nevers of the Unpopular: Never to hold (hope), Never to open (your heart), and Never to treasure (sweet words). ~ Wataru Watari

I think now we are simply strangers with some memories. ~ Tan Redding

Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.

And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment. ~ Kahlil Gibran

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

This is not to say that power and security are the sole or even the most important objectives of mankind; as a species we prize beauty, truth, and goodness. . . . What the realist seeks to stress is that all these more noble goals will be lost unless one makes provision for one's security in the power struggle among social groups. . . . A moral commitment lies at the heart of realism. . . . What Morgenthau and many other realists have in common is a belief that ethical and political behavior will fail unless it takes into account the actual practice of states and the teachings of sound theory. ~ Robert Gilpin

We're taught to talk about the world as a world of as states conceived as unified, coherent entities. If you study international relations (IR) theory, there's what's called "realist" IR theory, which says there is an anarchic world of states and states pursue their "national interest." It's in large part mythology. There are a few common interests, like we don't want to be destroyed. But, for the most part, people within a nation have very different interests. The interests of the CEO of General Electric and the janitor who cleans his floor are not the same. ~ Noam Chomsky

I'm not an idealist anymore, I'm a bitter realist. ~ Soe Hok Gie

People want a cop-out, listen I'm a realist and I talk about motivation, talk about all the things it takes to be greater or are important to win and people want to use excuses all the time. ~ Mike Ditka

I'm a realist. Just because you had sex once doesn't mean you have to fall in love. ~ Candace Bushnell

The ability to "fantasize" is the ability to survive. It's wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many wrong-headed people dealing with it ... The so-called realists are trying to drive us insane, and I refuse to be driven insane ... We survive by fantasizing. Take that away from us and the whole damned human race goes down the drain. ~ Ray Bradbury

The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel. ~ Sydney J. Harris

It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

In an agential realist account, agency is cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit. Agency is not aligned with human intentionality or subjectivity. Nor does it merely entail resignification or other specific kinds of moves within a social geometry ofantihumanism. The space of agency is not only substantially larger than that allowed for in Butler's performative account,
for example, but also, perhaps rather surprisingly, larger than what liberal humanism proposes. Significantly, matter is an agentive factor in its iterative materialization. ~ Karen Barad

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness - they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist. ~ C.S. Lewis

How do you know I'm a romanticist?" Like most romanticists Anwar too prided himself on being a realist. ~ Khwaja Ahmad Abbas

Valuing names as they do, Realists are sparing with them. They are likely to be known only as Joe or Bill or Plato. And they don't smile much.
Nominalists have more fun. They are known as Aristotle or Decimus-et-Ultimus Barziza, or as Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montague, or perhaps by one name in childhood and several others in the course of life.
A firm Realist misses out on one of the most satisfying of all human activities
the assumption of secret identities. A man who has lived and never been someone else has never lived.
It is true that occasionally there can be embarrassment in secret identities, but only a Realist will take the whole thing seriously enough to hit you. So have your fun, and avoid Realists. ~ Alexei Panshin

Reality is not art, but a realist art is one that can create an integral aesthetic of reality. ~ Andre Bazin

So that when man can be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.
Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religion. Similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. ~ Bhagat Singh

Any number of holier-than-thou honorable realists walk around in the belief that they have accomplished something, simply because they tell you for the hundredth time that a field is green and a red-painted house is painted red. ~ Edvard Munch

Jesus is not an impractical idealist; he is the practical realist. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Experience has proved that there is no difference between a so-called realist painting - of a landscape, for example - and an abstract painting. They both have more or less the same effect on the observer. ~ Gerhard Richter

Does his family have money?" I asked.
"No, Ulises's family doesn't have money," said Requena. "Actually, the only family he has is his mother, right? Or at least I've never heard of anyone else."
"I know his whole family," said Pancho. "I knew Ulises Lima long before any of you, long before Belano, and his mother is the only family he has. He's broke, that I can promise you."
"Then how could he finance two issues of a magazine?"
"Selling weed," said Pancho. The other two were quiet, but they didn't deny it.
"I can't believe it," I said.
"Well, it's true. The money comes from marijuana."
"Shit."
"He goes and gets it in Acapulco and then he delivers it to his clients in Mexico City."
"Shut up, Pancho," said Barrios.
"Why should I shut up? The kid's a fucking visceral realist, isn't he? So why do I have to shut up? ~ Roberto Bolano

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. ~ Quentin Crisp

When it comes to developing a worldview, we tend to face this false division: Either you are a realist who says the world is terrible, or a naïve optimist who says the world is wonderful and turns a blind eye. [Jack] Gilbert takes this middle way, and I think it's a far better way: he says the world is terrible and wonderful, and your obligation is to joy. . . . A real, mature, sincere joy - not a cheaply earned, ignorant joy. He's not talking about building a fortress of pleasure against the assault of the world. He's talking about the miraculousness of moments of wonder and how it seems to be worth it, after all. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society. ~ Wole Soyinka

Still a dreamer, yet more of a realist than ever before, I knew this was my time to sail. On the horizon I saw the shining future, as before. The difference now was that I felt the wind at my back. I was ready. ~ Chris Gardner

In Gothic fiction, characters must contend with the dead, with active hauntings or with hallucinations of hauntings, as well as whatever other trying circumstances they might find themselves in: orphanhood, lunacy, imprisonment, inheritances that go astray, troubling romantic situations. The Gothic novel does not strive for subtlety, and it isn't to everyone's taste. It can seem adolescent, an immature version of the stately, measured, grown-up realist novel, except that the line between Gothic and the realist is never clear. A disdain for the Gothic is limiting, since this literature, in all its flagrancy, has something to say about emotional as well as physical death, and a tale of a haunting can have a narrative vitality that is far from conclusive. Gothic stories linger especially in the mind. ~ Brenda Walker

The fact is, for all the critics' talk about me as a realist, I'm making everything up - everything. It is all about imagining with me. ~ Richard Bausch

My Life story:Pleasure Pain and Prison Part-1 and 2 was mostly written during my years of incarceration. Writing my life story in it's realist form, helped heal, and strengthen me to endure the pain that I needed to overcome. Some people may relate, and some may not; but this was my life. I am a proud survivor, baby. Hope you enjoy. Read Free for 3 days on kindle. 2-14-2017 thru 2-17-2017 ~ Wanda Lynn McRoyal

The endurance athlete is the ultimate realist. ~ Marty Liquori

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds. ~ Alan Lightman

I wish I had more control, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs had, but I'm a realist, too. I work in television. I don't know that I would want to spend the rest of my life controlling my characters. ~ Gene Roddenberry

In the realist, you have the sorry sight of the five senses deprived of their imagination. ~ Robert Breault

From oriole to crow, note the decline
In music. Crow is realist. But, then,
Oriole, also, may be realist. ~ Wallace Stevens

Even a committed realist will concede that there are many situations where an absolute standard of truth is unavailable. And yet, confronted with such situations, we often continue to act as if right and wrong are the relevant yardsticks. ~ Kathryn Schulz

I was hell-bent on being an effective humanitarian in Cambodia and Somalia. But a naïve fog is finally lifting. Revealed is a train wreck of illusions, the depravity of someone else's war, the futility of a competence stillborn there. To understand this you have to become this. ~ Kenneth Cain

It's time that we acknowledge the wisdom women have acquired by managing the chaos of daily life. Women are realists, the glue that holds society together. They bring a reverence to life that's instinctual, not just intellectual. ~ Teresa Heinz

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. ~ Eric Hoffer

When a man comes to your house with a bag full of money, he certainly has seen more in your backyard than in the bag. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

Sorry if you believe in true love, I'm a hopeless romantic too, but I'm also a realist and wear my cynicism like armour. ~ Hannah Witton

The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary. ~ Gustave Courbet

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist. ~ Carolyn Heilbrun

As long as one makes some kind of conscious state, whether a "passive sensation" or an "apprehended", come before reality, one will remain more or less in debt to the idealist method. The realist method pursues an exactly opposite course. Every given reality implies the thought which apprehends it. Therefore being is the condition of knowing; knowing is not the condition of being. When this has been established, another step in the direction of metaphysics can be taken. ~ Etienne Gilson

The things I believed in dont exist any more. It's foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Man who only acts is a slave. Man who only thinks is an illusionist. But the one, who is wise enough to generate Thougts, and relieze those, by instructing them with self-cognized right technics… the one, who also attempts to interchange the Thought of act into the Act of the thought… is the only one we need to take a cue from. It's because he hase the nature of true ideal realist… ~ SAR GISS

The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive. ~ Jean Piaget

My paintings are about light, about the way things look in their environment and especially about how things look painted. Form, colour and space are at the whim of reality, their discovery and organization is the assignment of the realist painter. ~ Ralph Goings

Someone told me I'm a cynical fatalist but I prefer the term realist. ~ Wade Kelly

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others' stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Men are not realists - only women are. ~ Mae West

Dimitri:
I promise you forever!

Vandanya:
Do stop making promises you can't keep!
I don't ask for forever, that word started to terrify me recently.
The sea has one shore for the realist; he would assume it has no end, geographical names only define it.
Seas and oceans! They are, in fact, connected together that the point you see and start with is the ending point as well.
And it means it's now or never, just like the claimed ocean of time,
they call it forever. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail. I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing ... Painting is a way of making you see what I saw. ~ Alex Katz

The 'realist' conception of continuing old-fashioned 'balance of power' politics may have been well founded in the past, but it is inconsistent with our increasing interdependent world. On moral grounds alone there can be no justification for the 20th century level of killing. To settle disputes without violence must become the primary goal of foreign policy for every nation. ~ Robert McNamara

A moral vision must be balanced by the realist dimension of prudence to have a reasonable prospect of success. ~ Joseph S. Nye Jr.

A great ruler, a great court, a great kingdom, these texts suggest never exist unto themselves, as stable, fully actualized entities, and, therefore, are never experienced in their plenitude in the present. Instead, they are always remembered as something that occured in the past or anticipated as something will reoccur in the future. Insofar as they are experienced in the current time, it is only for a brief and evanescent moment, overshadowed by the knowledge that it will soon vanish.
For a realist, the fact that the excellence of a person, a place, or a time is not appreciated in its own time proves that it was never actually as excellent as it seemed.
For a Romantic, however, there exist a people, places, and times whose excellence can only be appreciated Arthur always has to be - to quote the Alliterative Morte Arthure (ca.1400) - "the once and future king ~ Karen Sullivan

When I was younger, I was somewhat of an idealist. I guess I'm a little bit more of a realist now. I think there's a lot that can be done to make the world a better place, but it's more about choosing your battles. ~ Conor Oberst

But he could not help it. No one can help it. One is a realist. One has put up with it all ever since childhood; one has had the courage to look it full in the eye, possibly courage enough to look it in the eye all one's life long. Then one day the distances beckon with their floating possibilities, and in one's hands are the admission tickets, two slips of blue paper. One is a realist no longer. One has finished putting up with it all, one no longer has the courage to look it in the eye, one is in the power of beckoning hospitable distances, floating possibilities, perhaps forever afterwards. Perhaps one's life is over. ~ Halldor Laxness

The sorcerer is a Simple Realist: the world is real
but then so must consciousness be real since its effects are so tangible. ~ Hakim Bey

Only the free and personal man is a good citizen (realist), and even with the lack of particular (scholarly, artistic, etc)culture, a tasteful judge (humanist). ~ Max Stirner

I'm a realist, but sometimes I find myself floating in fantasy. ~ Brittany Perloff

It was then that I made the discovery that his talk created reverberations, that the echo took a long time to reach one's ears. I began to compare it with French talk in which I had been enveloped for so long. The latter seemed more like the play of light on an alabaster vase, something reflective, nimble, dancing, liquid, evanescent, whereas the other, the Katsimbalistic language, was opaque, cloudy, pregnant with resonances which could only be understood long afterwards, when the reverberations announced the collision with thoughts, people, objects located in distant parts of the earth. The Frenchman puts walls about his talk, as he does about his garden: he puts limits about everything in order to feel at home. At bottom he lacks confidence in his fellow-man; he is skeptical because he doesn't believe in the innate goodness of human beings. He has become a realist because it is safe and practical. The Greek, on the other hand, is an adventurer: he is reckless and adaptable, he makes friends easily. The walls which you see in Greece, when they are not of Turkish or Venetian origin, go back to the Cyclopean age. Of my own experience I would say that there is no more direct, approachable, easy man to deal with than the Greek. He becomes a friend immediately: he goes out to you. With the Frenchman friendship is a long and laborious process: it may take a lifetime to make a friend of him. He is best in acquaintanceship where there is little to risk and where there are no afterm ~ Henry Miller

Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which between the ages of twenty and thirty-four had imperceptibly replaced the beliefs of his childhood and youth, he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence it came, what it is for, why, and what it is, Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development - the terms that had superseded these beliefs - were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat for a muslin garment and who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but with the whole of his being, that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish miserably. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Looking for a saviour in the sky? Be serious! Know you still not that there ain't any saviour but science! Get rid of your cultural craps and your religious illusions! Be realist! In this universe, only the realists have the chance to save themselves! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn't quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset. ~ Jack McDevitt

I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people. ~ Malcolm X

Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes. ~ Studs Terkel

To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make! ~ Criss Jami

I'm a realist," I replied stubbornly, "not a romantic. Romantics
are always disappointed."
"Maybe they're disappointed because they're always surrounded
by realists." Simon countered. ~ Amanda Howells

Like any good optimist, I don't expect the worst to happen. Only, like any optimist worth his salt, I like to go and look as soon as possible afterward jest in case it did. ~ William Faulkner

I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. And my reality is that we live in a multifaceted, multicultural world. And maybe once we stop labeling ourselves, then maybe everyone else will. ~ Octavia Spencer

Realist artists should join together in a worldwide effort ... Sharing it with each other and teaching it - that is the key to the success and never-ending beauty and harmony of Realism. ~ Igor Babailov

I can be fairly optimistic, but I'm probably more a realist, I think. I mean, optimism's an interesting quality, isn't it, because I'm always slightly dubious as to what's behind it? ~ Guy Pearce