Realism Quotes

You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty.

Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

… you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... 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.

Politics is the art of the possible.

All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.

… realpolitik

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

If you expect nothing from anybody, you're never disappointed.

I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.

I'm not perfect. I'm not polished.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

I don't feel like we have that Paul McCartney gene, and I think the cool thing about us is that we know it.

A lot of people play single to work some angle. I'm always about keeping it real. If that's how I'm living, that's how I'm living.

A lot of Americans like happy endings, but life does not necessarily have a happy ending.

Everything's not always perfect.

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.

There is nothing to be gained by waiting for a better situation. You see where you are and you do what you can with that.

When I write books, I've learned not to have any expectations that I'm going to change the world.

I am a social realist writer.