Common Sense Quotes - Page 22

• But I go out as a missionary not that I may follow the dictates of common sense, but that I may obey that command of Christ, 'Go into all the world and preach.' He who said 'preach,' said also, 'Go ye into and preach,' and what Christ hath joined together let not man put asunder.

  James Gilmour

  Men, Together, Missionary

  James Gilmour (1892). “James Gilmour of Mongolia: His Diaries, Letters and Reports”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I go out as a missionary not that I may follow the dictates of common sense, but that I may obey that command of Christ.

  James Gilmour

  Missionary, May, Christ

  James Gilmour (1892). “James Gilmour of Mongolia: His Diaries, Letters and Reports”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...even on the low ground of common sense I seemed to be called to be a missionary. Is the kingdom a harvest field? Then I thought it reasonable that I should seek to work where the work was most abundant and the workers fewest.

  William Carey

  Missionary, Kingdoms, Fields

  53 Copy quote

• . . . Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise creator of the universe, and in his own inability - like the boy on the seashore - to fathom the entire ocean in all its depths. He therefore believed that there were not only many things in heaven beyond his philosophy, but plenty on earth as well, and he made it his business to understand for himself what the majority of intelligent men of his time accepted without dispute (to them it was as natural as common sense) - the traditional account of the creation.

  Isaac Newton

  Wise, Business, Philosophy

  11 Copy quote

• But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.

  David Hume

  Art, Men, Ideas

  David Hume (2013). “Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects”, p.290, Broadview Press

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good Luck is rather particular who she rides with, and mostly prefers those who have got common sense and a good heart; at least that is my experience.

  Anna Sewell

  Heart, Good Luck, Particular

  Anna Sewell (2015). “Black Beauty”, p.133, Xist Publishing

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Raising taxes doesn't create jobs, and this is a common sense thing. Washington doesn't get it. They believe if they take more money and send it to Washington, D.C. somehow they create wealth. It doesn't work.

  Kevin Yoder

  Jobs, Believe, Wealth

  "Erin Burnett Outfront", www.cnn.com. December 9, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Knowledge, without common sense,' says Lee, is 'folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.' But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

  Austin Farrer

  Life, Peace, Kindness

  7 Copy quote

• Poetry being an attempt to express, not the common sense, - as the avoirdupois of the hero, or his structure in feet and inches, - but the beauty and soul in his aspect . . . runs into fable, personifies every fact. . . .

  Marsilio Ficino

  Beauty, Running, Hero

  17 Copy quote

• Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.

  Plato

  Eye, Dark, Men

  Plato (1977). “The Portable Plato”, p.333, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: "Use your common sense rather than book instructions."

  Robert Baden-Powell

  Time, Book, Character

  15 Copy quote

• You don't have to know anything about a subject as long as you use common sense and imagination, plus enthusiasm! I use all periods of design in my work, for, after all, decorative styles are simply indications of a manner of living.

  Dorothy Draper

  Long, Imagination, Design

  25 Copy quote

• Happiness for the average person may be said to flow largely from common sense - adapting one-self to circumstances - and a sense of humor.

  Beatrice Lillie

  Self, Average, May

  10 Copy quote

• Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior.

  Temple Grandin

  Autism, Too Much, Sometimes

  5 Copy quote

• A balanced program for tax reform based upon the common sense idea of lowering taxes out of surplus revenues.

  Andrew Mellon

  Ideas, Reform, Program

  19 Copy quote

• What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

  James Anthony Froude

  Men, Prosperity, Virtue

  James Anthony Froude (1871). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.252

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Confidence, Mankind, Common

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.172, Cambridge University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The illogical man is what advertising is after. This is why advertising is so anti-rational; this is why it aims at uprooting not only the rationality of man but his common sense.

  Henryk Skolimowski

  Men, Uprooting, Advertising

  7 Copy quote

• A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.

  Francois Arago

  Art, Peace, People

  François Arago, James Patrick MUIRHEAD (1839). “Historical Eloge of James Watt ... Translated ... with additional notes and an appendix, by James Patrick Muirhead”, p.149

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creativity, Ideas, Creative

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.116, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Both in the lower and the middle classes the wiseacres urge young men 'to think it over' before taking the decisive step. Thus they foster the delusion that the choice of a wife or husband may be governed by a certain number of accurately weighable pros and cons. This is a crude delusion on the part of common sense.

  Denis de Rougemont

  Marriage, Husband, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The first chess book that I read was Dufresne's self-tutor, published with Lasker's Common Sense in Chess as an appendix.

  Vasily Smyslov

  Book, Learning, Self

  14 Copy quote

• Certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.

  George Orwell

  Loyalty, Pain, Struggle

  George Orwell's review of the book "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler in "New English Weekly", March 21, 1940.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The actions of the police division today will be to assist the church for the funeral. We anticipate that a fairly large crowd will be outside the church and the general area, ... We're trying to approach everything with common sense.

  Thomas Streicher

  Funeral, Police, Church

  " 'Crucial day' begins in Cincinnati", www.cnn.com. April 14, 2001.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what one's eyes see every day.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Believe, Teaching, Eye

  "Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics". Nobel Prize Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 08, 2001.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source