Common Sense Quotes - Page 20

• I wanna be your happiness. I wanna be your common sense pain.

  Conor Oberst

  Pain, Common

  Song: Get-Well-Cards, Album: Conor Oberst, 2008

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• I think people have common sense and can tell what's real, what's right or what's wrong and work it out.

  Billie Piper

  Real, Thinking, People

  "Piper dreams" by Barbara Ellen, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2008.

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• At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

  John Paul Stevens

  Government, Self, People

  "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310". United States Supreme Court case No. 08-205, caselaw.findlaw.com. January 21, 2010.

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• Using, as an excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Common, Excuse

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.10, Random House

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• Scientific revolutions, almost by definition, defy common sense.

  Michio Kaku

  Definitions, Revolution, Common

  Michio Kaku (1995). “Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension”, p.7, OUP Oxford

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• When common sense sees a puzzling phenomenon it looks for a causal agent. When it sees organization it looks for an organizer. This works amazingly well for purposes ranging from the diagnosis of diseases to the creation of governments. But it cannot account for emergence ... the appearance of complex phenomena not predictable from the basic elements and processes alone.

  Carl Bereiter

  Government, Organization, Looks

  Carl Bereiter (2005). “Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age”, p.200, Routledge

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• 95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Complicated, Economics, Made

  YouTube Chanel "The RSA"/ "Ha-Joon Chang - 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism", www.youtube.com. September 9, 2010.

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• Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Keys, Ethos, Understanding

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe From Nothing”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Children, People, Parent

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.

  Andrew Tobias

  Giving, Kind, Deposits

  "The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know". Book by Andrew Tobias, 1982.

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• While accessory items and embedded features help minimize driver distraction, nothing replaces simple common-sense when using a cell phone in the car. Pull over to the side of the road to dial manually, know the features and functions of your phone before you drive and allow voice mail to pick up your calls if you are driving - these are all simple and commonsensical steps we can all take to minimize distraction from in-car cell phone use.

  Gary Shapiro

  Simple, Voice, Phones

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• Consumers are realizing the benefits of in-car entertainment and navigation systems. When used properly, these products are great tools that help drivers focus on the road. Consumers need to remember to follow state laws, watch the road and use common sense when putting these and other products to work.

  Gary Shapiro

  Law, Car, Focus

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• There is no firm dividing line between what is an epidemic and what is not an epidemic, but I think, when you look at a map that shows widespread influenza activity in 36 states, that we regard it -- from a common-sense perspective -- as an epidemic.

  Julie Gerberding

  Thinking, Epidemics, Perspective

  "CDC head calls flu outbreak 'epidemic'". www.cnn.com. December 19, 2003.

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• If we do the kind of common-sense public health measures we know work, we ought to be able to stop it from being a global pandemic.

  Julie Gerberding

  Pandemics, Able, Kind

  "Health agency: SARS pandemic can be avoided". www.cnn.com. April 28, 2003.

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• Defend me, therefore, common sense, say
  From reveries so airy, from the toil
  Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
  And growing old in drawing nothing up.

  William Cowper

  Drawing, Toil, Buckets

  'The Task' (1785) bk. 3 'The Garden' l. 187

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• It isn't common sense that is paramount in this world, it's wishful thinking.

  Francoise Sagan

  Thinking, World, Paramount

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• Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

  Samuel Smiles

  Issues, Inspired, Goodness

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.8

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• The path of success in business is invariably the path of common-sense. Nothwithstanding all that is said about "lucky hits," the best kind of success in every man's life is not that which comes by accident. The only "good time coming" we are justified in hoping for is that which we are capable of making for ourselves.

  Samuel Smiles

  Success, Men, Lucky

  Samuel Smiles (1861). “Self-help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.255

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• The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense. Humanity itself cries out against it, and demands it to be utterly abolished.

  Catherine the Great

  Humanity, Sound, Use

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• [P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.

  E. O. Wilson

  Art, Zero, Mean

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• Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through.

  Celia Thaxter

  Wise, Sweet, Flower

  Celia Thaxter (1896). “Letters of Celia Thaxter”

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• Common sense is a vastly overrated virtue. I myself prefer the spark of genius.

  Margaret Millar

  Genius, Sparks, Virtue

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• Students do not need to be labeled or measured any more than they are. They don't need more Federal funds, grants, and gimmicks. What they need from us is common sense, dedication, and bright, energetic teachers who believe that all children are achievers and who take personally the failure of any one child.

  Marva Collins

  Education, Teacher, Children

  Marva Collins (1990). “Marva Collins' Way”, Tarcher

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• As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

  Richard Rorty

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Swings

  "Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3". Book by Richard Rorty (Introduction), March 13, 1998.

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• I would like to see ... an entirely different procedure which is that we vote on the budget and decide how much we are going to spend, first, the way any family does, and then fit our priorities into what we think we have to spend. Instead, what we do, is to do it incrementally, starting at the bottom, adding and adding and adding. ... Until we get the support of all the authorities in this House to decide, first, what we think this country can afford and then decide where the amount is going to be allocated, we will never have common sense in this House.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Country, Thinking, Priorities

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