Common Sense Quotes - Page 22

• Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.

  Rene Descartes

  Thinking, Desire, Difficult

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• There are at the present time two great nations in the world--the Russians and the Americans. The American relies upon his personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the people. The Russian centers all his authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Destiny, Two, Rely Upon

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• John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

  Bertrand Russell

  Common, Englishmen

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• Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.

  Jim Trelease

  Children, Book, Reading

  Jim Trelease (2001). “The Read-aloud Handbook”, Alloybooks

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• The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Quality, Levels, Firsts

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.113, Indiana University Press

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• We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.

  Immanuel Kant

  Knowledge, Principles, Logic

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• A quick and sound judgment, good common sense, kind feeling, and an instinctive perception of character, in these are the elements of what is called tact, which has so much to do with acceptability and success in life.

  Charles Simmons

  Character, Feelings, Perception

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• There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Reflection, Doubt

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.111, Hackett Publishing

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• I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

  Edward Teller

  Simple, Way, Physics

  Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley (2013). “Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics”, p.2, Basic Books

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• I regard (parenting) as the hardest, most complicated, anxiety-ridden, sweat-and-blood-producing job in the world. Succeeding requires the ultimate in patience, common sense, commitment, humor, tact, love, wisdom, awareness, and knowledge. At the same time, it holds the possibility for the most rewarding, joyous experience of a lifetime, namely, that of being successful guides to a new and unique human being.

  Virginia Satir

  Jobs, Commitment, Successful

  Virginia Satir (1988). “The new peoplemaking”, Science & Behavior Books

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• I do not accept that we cannot find a common sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic second amendment freedoms and the rights of law abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis.

  Barack Obama

  Gun, Rights, Law

  "Washington Navy Yard Massacre — The Aftermath" by Dorian de Wind, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 23, 2013.

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• We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Gun, Mass Shootings

  "CNN Newsroom" with Rosa Flores, www.cnn.com. September 22, 2013.

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• Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Natural, Wit, Profundity

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• Common sense has no place in Quantum Mechanics.

  Michio Kaku

  Mechanic, Quantum, Common

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• Freud, Jung thought, had been a great discoverer of facts about the mind, but far too inclined to leave the solid ground of "critical reason and common sense." Freud for his part criticized Jung for being gullible about occult phenomena and infatuated with Oriental religions; he viewed with sardonic and unmitigated skepticism Jung's defense of religious feelings as an integral element in mental health. For Freud, religion was a psychological need projected onto culture, the child's feeling of helplessness surviving in adults, to be analyzed rather than admired.

  Peter Gay

  Religious, Children, Psychological Needs

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• Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.

  Saul Kripke

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thorough Understanding

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• Fortunately for common sense, psychological research has shown that babies with more than one attachment are less distressed whenmother leaves to go to work. They are more content and playful in the presence of other adults, meaning that they feel secure with people other than Mother.

  Sandra Scarr

  Mother, Baby, Attachment

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• It would be foolish to give credit to Euclid for pangeometrical conceptions; the idea of geometry deifferent from the common-sense one never occurred to his mind. Yet, when he stated the fifth postulate, he stood at the parting of the ways. His subconscious prescience is astounding. There is nothing comperable to it in the whole history of science.

  George Sarton

  Ideas, Giving, Mind

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• In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy.

  William Poundstone

  Art, Crazy, Secret

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• The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Marriage, Work, Loneliness

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• Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching.

  Fannie Barrier Williams

  Real, Teaching, Patriotic

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• There are areas using what's called the "checkerboard strategy." They are different cities where you can move around the "checkerboard," doing things you can't do in every square, that you can do in some of them, building a mosaic of these kinds of practices. There are about 400 cable television networks, for example, that are publicly owned. That's a big fight for big private companies. In some areas, this is a political struggle, in some it's conventional common sense.

  Gar Alperovitz

  Struggle, Moving, Fighting

  Source: www.salon.com

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• But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling class are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.

  Karl Marx

  Spiritual, Class, Language

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• Maybe we need to fall on the common-sense side of protecting these species, but continue harvesting wood products we all use and enjoy. We've got to be able to do both - protect water quality and species, as well as harvest trees.

  John Hancock

  Fall, Water, Tree

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• We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.

  Henry David Thoreau

  History, Reform, Return

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.88, Xist Publishing

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