Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker rejects abstract philosophy in favor of acknowledging immediate physical reality.
In plain terms
I care more about real dangers than abstract ideas.
What can you take from it?
Immediate physical reality matters more than abstract theory.

Where it applies

  • dangerous situations
  • philosophical debates
  • crisis management

Putting it to work

  • prioritize concrete facts
  • focus on immediate threats
  • avoid over-intellectualizing

Questions to consider

  • When does philosophy become impractical?
  • What defines real danger?

Another view

Abstract ideas can still offer valuable perspectives on reality.

More from Graham Greene

  1. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell…

    Permalink to quote #44
  2. The hurt is in the act of possession; we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a wa…

    Permalink to quote #46
  3. 'God save us always,' I said, 'from the innocent and the good.'

    Permalink to quote #43

Related quotes

  1. This thoroughly 'pragmatic' view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field …

    William JamesWilliam James quote #86
  2. It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can…

    Archibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeish quote #1
  3. How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know t…

    ZhuangziZhuangzi quote #2