Vladimir Putin Quotes

My only definition is that I am a pragmatist.

I think I'm pragmatic.

I like to be an optimist, but I like to be a realist, too.

I'm really pragmatic. That's my reality.

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.

All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.

We need realism to deal with reality.

We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.

One has to view things realistically.

What I've learned is that life is a balance between idealism and realism.

I'm pragmatic.

You got to keep your feet on the ground, and it is what it is.

The most important thing is to simultaneously deal with reality - really the way it is, not the way you wished it could be or you hoped it could be - but also have a vision about where you want to go.

That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.

As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.

I deal with what "is," not with what I wish was or not with what was or used to be.

To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.

There's no problem so great it can't be solved. If it can't be solved, it's not a problem, it's reality.

Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you.All is bright if you will think it so. All is happy if you will make it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal, too imaginary. Dreaming by day, I mean. Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in.

The trick is to fix the problem you have, rather than the problem you want.

In the future I'm going to devote less time to sentimentality and more time to reality.