'Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.'

'That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.'

Milton Friedman

'Politics is the art of the possible.'

Otto Von Bismarck said this as statesman, but I also see him saying this as tinkerer, which is another attribute of the great figures of history.

It expresses the belief that in politics you need to work with what is around, ie an expression of Realpolitik.

But it also suggests a desire for agency through evolutionary action, ie the adjacent possible: https://medium.com/key-lessons-from-books/the-key-lessons-from-where-good-ideas-come-from-by-steven-johnson-1798e11becdb

Bismarck was the crisis master par excellence. He used every new opportunity that arose to engineer a crisis to steer the course of Prussia towards Reichdom.

He had his ideas, and then he steered events to his conclusion, at which point he got to implement his ideas.

If politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck says

And the politics of the impossible become the politics of the inevitable, as Friedman says

Then the principle is that our ideals become manifest only through realist action through an evolutionary process

One can even apply another idea here:

The Indirect Approach, laid out by Lidell Hart https://twitter.com/Post_Apathy/status/1316001968670871554?s=19

You never take Napoleonic action to achieve your aims - it generates too much opposition and envy. Instead, go for the long march through the institutions (Gramsci), building your position brick by brick, taking the easiest route out (avoiding competition - Thiel).