Common Sense Quotes - Page 12

• If elephants didn't exist, you couldn't invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.

  Lyall Watson

  Elephants, Challenges, Groups

  Lyall Watson (2003). “Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant”, p.38, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Common sense is something that everyone needs, few have, and none think they lack.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Thinking, Needs, Common

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• What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?

  Steven Pinker

  Ocean, Moon, Dna

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• I will use my position as chairman emeritus on the Energy and Commerce Committee to try to bring some common sense to EPA regulations.

  Joe Barton

  Trying, Regulation, Epa

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• Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Reality, Earth

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• Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

  Mason Cooley

  Literature, Common, Vulgar

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• Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

  Mason Cooley

  Running, Philosophy, Literature

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• Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

  Roger Ebert

  Eye, Cutting, Brain

  Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.22, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• These algorithms, which I'll call public relevance algorithms, are-by the very same mathematical procedures-producing and certifying knowledge.  The algorithmic assessment of information, then, represents a particular knowledge logic, one built on specific presumptions about what knowledge is and how one should identify its most relevant components.  That we are now turning to algorithms to identify what we need to know is as momentous as having relied on credentialed experts, the scientific method, common sense, or the word of God.

  Tarleton Gillespie

  Assessment, Experts, Needs

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• I don’t know about ‘common sense opinion’ by the way. It seems to me that the office of common sense is to keep us from playing cards for high stakes with people we meet on trains, and not to endorse metaphysical opinions.

  Peter van Inwagen

  People, Office, Cards

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• People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope.

  Michael Robotham

  Children, Heart, Order

  "Bleed for Me (Joseph O'Loughlin)". Book by Michael Robotham, 2010.

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• 95 percent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even for the remaining 5 percent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Essentials, Details, Complicated

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• A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Inspiration, Finals

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• Honestly this is not going to change unless the people who want to prevent these kinds of mass shootings from taking place feel at least as passionate, at least as mobilized and well-funded as the NRA and the gun manufacturers are because the politics in Congress are such where even members of Congress who know better are fearful if they vote their conscience and support common sense measures like background checks, they're worried they're going to lose.

  Barack Obama

  Gun, Mass Shootings, People

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• I stand in support of this common sense legislation to license everyone who wishes to purchase a gun...I also believe that every new handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry

  Hillary Clinton

  Believe, Gun, Support

  "Hillary Clinton on Guns: Not a Big Fan" by Jacob Sullum, reason.com. April 13, 2015.

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• I find a lot of people say, “Oh organic and local’s expensive and I just don’t have time.” And I’m like, well how much TV do you watch? Where are your priorities right now? I always take the time to eat well and eat locally because it’s common sense.

  Ellen Page

  People, Priorities, Watches

  "Ellen Page’s Greenest Day". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September 11, 2010.

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• You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that's only because you're afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.

  Mick Farren

  Fear, Real, Names

  Mick Farren (2010). “Darklost”, p.154, Macmillan

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• You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Funny, Attitude, Insanity

  "Personal Recollections" by Rush Rhees, Ch. 6, 1981.

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• The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.

  Adolf Hitler

  Eye, Men, Justice

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.

  Michael King

  Issues, Able, Wells

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• There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead.

  Howard Schultz

  Wise, Believe, Bystanders

  Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon (2012). “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul”, p.7, Rodale

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• Small-scale fisheries should not be favoured over large-scale operations ebcause of romantic notions of rugged small operators battling both the elements and anonymous corporations. [They ought to be supported] because of the scientific evidence available to confirm the common-sense inference that local fishers, if given privileged access, will tend to avoid trashing their local stocks, while foreign fishers do not have such motivation.

  Daniel Pauly

  Motivation, Elements, Corporations

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• We must rely less on spreadsheets and funding formulas and more on common sense.

  Kenny Guinn

  Funding, Formulas, Rely

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• Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but makes sense, if not common sense.

  Edward Kasner

  Math, Views, Imagination

  Edward Kasner, James Newman (2013). “Mathematics and the Imagination”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• There's a tendency for adults to label the math that they can do (such as identifying patterns, choosing between competing offers in a supermarket, and challenging statistics published by the government) as "common sense" and labeling everything they can't do as "math" - so that being bad at math becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Robert Eastaway

  Education, Math, Government

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