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… is from page 859 of Clarence Philbrook’s profound December 1953 article in the American Economic Review, “‘Realism’ in Policy Espousal [2]“:
Only one type of serious defense of a policy is open to an economist or anyone else: he must maintain that the policy is good. True ‘realism’ is the same thing men have always meant by wisdom: to decide the immediate in the light of the ultimate.