Bram Cohen Quotes

My only definition is that I am a pragmatist.

You can do anything you want, as long as it works.

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

I'm a pragmatist.

Well, I mean, I'm very much a pragmatic person.

One thing I've always liked about the military is there's a certain amount of pragmatism.

When you're failing, there's a very powerful incentive to put ideology aside and just do what seems to work.

I'm very pragmatic.

Our progress toward a wise conclusion will not be improved by dwelling upon the theories.... It is a condition which confronts us—not a theory!

It is one thing to diagnose a problem; it is another to resolve it.

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.

I'm pragmatic.

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

I think I'm pragmatic.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

The strongest streak in the American character is a fierce pragmatism that mistrust blind ideology of every stripe and insists on finding what really works.

To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

The common agenda both sides seem to share is: Whatever works.

I'm just not a purist. You set goals and you have to work with everyone to figure out how to get what you can.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

It is best to live however one can be.

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

Principles ... become modified in practice, by facts.