Quotes about Realism

We must consult our means rather than our wishes.

The weapon of choice for Jesus was the cross. The Lamb of Revelation slays with the sword that proceeds from his mouth. Christian realism compromises the way of the Lamb because true realism is a deep reality that sees God on the throne and the Lamb in its center.

Pinchas Lapide, toward the end of his book that develops what he calls a theo-politics of loving small steps, finds in these words of Jesus six pillars that can help each of us reshape our culture from hate toward love: (1) Jesus is a realist who knows a world of evil; (2) Jesus has a faith that humans can change; (3) Jesus humanizes haters and their hatred; (4) Jesus calls us to imitate God; (5) Jesus knows this is a battle to fight; and (6) this theo-politics moves in small steps:

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!

I'm a huge tennis fan, so the game I play the most is 'Top Spin.' You really have to know how to play tennis to get good at this game - whether you want to hit a forehand or a backhand, when's the best time to hit a slice - it's so real.