Claude McKay Quotes

Utopianism is all well and good if it proceeds from a courageous appreciation of the world as it actually exists

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.

I'm always going to have a strong preference for things that can actually pass into legislation. We can talk about big issues and have big goals while also working on pragmatic things.

I am kind of an idealist but I became a DUP member because I believe politics should have a footing in harsh reality.

I'm still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people's lives better.

What Simone Weil said politics has meant all along, which means that you fight for 11 percent, 12 percent, 13 percent, that you avoid golden-age thinking and romantic melancholy and you just keep pushing.

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

I am not an optimist. I'm a very serious possibilist. It's a new category where we take emotion apart and we just work analytically with the world.

I'd ask myself, 'What do I think is really unjust?' That should be a starting point for how you engage with the world.

Party honesty is party expediency.

Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one.

Conservatism, except when it is expressed as pure idealism, takes into account reality, and the reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous. This isn't to say that the war is wrong, or that history will judge it to be wrong. But it is absolutely to say that conservatism implies a certain submission to reality; and this war has an unrealistic frank and is being conscripted by events.

Government is the art of the momentarily feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable.

Democratic politics involves both principals and power. To argue only for principles is narcissistically self indulgent.

In politics it's very dangerous to have a philosophy. In a democracy you should have politicians who settle the problems that exist, not who set out to prove philosophical ideals.

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

A pragmatist won't let ideology get in the way of what's got to be done to get elected.

I learned over time that you do not go for the perfect solution….You do what is doable and then you want to try and do a little bit more.

Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral..

Is it not time to awaken from the deceitful dream of a golden age and to adopt a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?

[Ideological] Purity is fine but it doesn’t win elections and is not a governing strategy. Compromise is required.

The laws were framed by certain well-meaning visionaries who, building republics in the air, have tried to reach political perfection on the assumption that humanity is perfect. So we have had philosophers instead of leaders, philanthropy instead of legislation, dialectic instead of tactics, and sophists instead of soldiers.

I'm well aware of the pragmatism of politics.