Common Quotes - Page 26

• We had a large common domain, already added by the several States for the common benefit of all; purchase and war might make large additions to this common domain; hence the power over existing and future territories, with the stipulation to admit new States, was conferred.

  Robert Toombs

  War, Power, Benefits

  Robert Augustus Toombs (1860). “Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs: On the Crisis. Delivered Before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, 1860”, p.4

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• Love of peace is common among weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy persons; and on the other hand courage is found among many men of evil temper and bad character. Neither quality shall by itself avail. Justice among the nations of mankind, and the uplifting of humanity, can be brought about only by those strong and daring men who with wisdom love peace, but who love righteousness more than peace.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Love, Uplifting, Strong

  Theodore Roosevelt (2013). “Bully!”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.

  William Osler

  Medicine, Way, Cold

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• God who created us has granted us the faculty of speech that we might disclose the counsels of our hearts to one another and that, since we possess our human nature in common, each of us might share his thoughts with his neighbor, bringing them forth from the secret recesses of the heart as from a treasury.

  Saint Basil

  Heart, Secret, Speech

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• The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism.

  Henry James

  Art, Practice, Criticism

  Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.232, University of Chicago Press

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• I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a PhD in comparative literature so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called FMR, so we have a common interest in design.

  David Chipperfield

  Art, Book, Wife

  "My space". Interview with Andy Barker, www.theguardian.com. September 6, 2008.

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• I will not perform in this city as long as the blatant targeting of black culture and minorities congregating is acceptable common practice.

  Illmaculate

  Practice, Cities, Long

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• People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.

  David Stove

  Religious, Powerful, Plato

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• The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States. . . . We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us.

  Mary Elizabeth Lease

  Country, Children, Home

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• Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master…Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

  Mary Elizabeth Lease

  Country, Wall, Government

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• There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Stars, Children

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• Common sense is an instinct given to man and enough of it is genius. Smartness is measured by the level of common sense one has, not by how much educated or knowledgeable he is.

  Josh Billings

  Men, Common Sense, Genius

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• What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Artist, Despair

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.135, Wordsworth Editions

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• Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Men, Names, Common Sense

  Richard Chenevix Trench (1873). “A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present”, p.49

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• Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.

  Michael Sandel

  What Matters, Perfect, People

  "What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel - review" by John Lanchester, www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2012.

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• No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Kings, Men, Race

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, correspondence and private papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by T.J. Randolph”

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• The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.

  Samuel Johnson

  Literature

  Dr John Campbell, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 1, p. 418 n. 1 (1 July 1763)

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• Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means.

  Jacques Barzun

  Mean, Men, Race

  Jacques Barzun (1965). “Race: a study in superstition”

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• The Adlerians, in the name of "individual psychology," take the side of society against the individual. ... Adler's later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. "Our science ... is based on common sense." Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.

  Alfred Adler

  Names, Common Sense, Psychology

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• To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Past, Age, Complaining

  'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 4

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• The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation ... it is common to wish well to oneself, but in our technically unified world, wishing well to oneself is sure to be futile unless it is combined with wishing well to others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wish, World, Cooperation

  Bertrand Russell, Andrew G. Bone (2003). “Man's Peril, 1954-55”, p.12, Psychology Press

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• You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Art, Powerful

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• I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.

  Doris Lessing

  Black And White, Men, Differences

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

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• Often in this our life do we begin by cursing men and end by loving them. A sense of the common fallibility of all flesh makes us kin. No man is lovable who is invincible.

  Neville Cardus

  Men, Flesh, Lovable

  Neville Cardus (2012). “Cardus on Cricket: A selection from the cricket writings of Sir Neville Cardus”, p.110, Souvenir Press

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• It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.

  Thomas Sowell

  Clever, Mean, Common Sense

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.328, Hoover Press

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