REALISM QUOTES III

quotations about realism

Cynical is a fool's word for realist.

PAUL CHRISTOPHER

The Lucifer Gospel

Tags: Paul Christopher


The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

attributed, Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic

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Hyperrealism is both breathtaking and boring. I want to see the Artist's hand in the work of art. I want to see the essence and the spirit of the subject, and I want to see a celebration of the Medium in the work of art.

JANET BADGER

attributed, Art Quotes


Realism is not enough--there has to be vision.... It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.

ROBERT FRANK

attributed, Photographers on photography: a critical anthology


But what reality was ever made by realists?

RICHARD FLANAGAN

The Narrow Road to the Deep North


It's not clear to me that realism is a rallying cry.

ROBERT SHRUM

"Clinton, Sanders use N.H. primary to frame long battle to come", Washington Post, February 5, 2016


The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.

EDMUND BURKE

The Letters on a Regicide Peace

Tags: Edmund Burke


If the defining feature of realism is the belief that there is a world existing independently of our knowledge of it, then that independence of objects from knowledge immediately undermines any complacent assumptions about the relation between them and renders it problematic. What reason have we for accepting this basic realist proposition of the mind-independence of the world? I would argue that it is the evident fallibility of our knowledge -- the experience of getting things wrong, of having our expectations confounded, and of crashing into things -- that justifies us in believing that the world exists regardless of what we happen to think of it.

ANDREW SAYER

introduction, Realism and Social Science