Quotes about Realism

The naive view of reality therefore is not compatible with modern physics. To deal with such paradoxes we shall adopt an approach that we call model-dependent realism. It is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth.

Though realism may be a tempting viewpoint, as we'll see later, what we know about modern physics makes it a difficult one to defend.

If I were writing a novel I would end it here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I'm beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.

If you attempt what is beyond your power, your trouble will be wasted and you court not only misfortune but ridicule.

A spouse who gets angry at having been betrayed is evading a basic, tragic truth: that no one can be everything to another person.

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a great realist. He was one of the few who quickly understood, even before Hitler came to power, that National Socialism was a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone.

Life's not fair, get over it!

If you tried to right all the wrongs in the world you'd exhaust yourself in under an hour.

As good as the people are in your life, there are no perfect people. There is no perfect boss, no perfect friend, no perfect neighbor, no perfect spouse. Give people room to be human. Quit expecting them to perform perfectly all the time.

The successful people of this world take life as it comes. They just go out and deal with the world as it is.

Mix idealism with realism and add hard work. This will often bring much more than you could ever hope for.