Common Quotes - Page 29

• Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.

  Neil Gaiman

  Reality, Two, Talking

  "The Books of Magic. Book I: The Invisible Labyrinth". Book by Neil Gaiman, 1990 - 1991.

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• Those who live not by law would be justified by Custom: but, as common practice is the worst teacher that ever was, so the truth and goodness of things is not to be estimated by the entertainment and acceptance they find in the world.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  Teacher, Acceptance, Law

  Benjamin Whichcote, Anthony Tuckney (1753). “Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney”, p.55

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• We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another's burdens.

  Jane Addams

  Mixing, Size, Ethics

  Jane Addams, Charlene Haddock Seigfried (2002). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.7, University of Illinois Press

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• If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

  Hannah Arendt

  Stupid, Philosophy, Exercise

  "The Life of the Mind". Book by Hannah Arendt, p. 13, 1978.

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• Although we may come from vastly different stories and very different walks of life, we are one people who possess common values and common ideals; who celebrate individual excellence but also share a recognition that together, we can accomplish great and wonderful things we can't accomplish alone.

  Barack Obama

  Together We Can, People, Excellence

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• When going to the temple to adore Divinity neither say nor do any thing in the interim pertaining to the common affairs of life.

  Pythagoras

  Divinity, Temples, Affair

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• The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, that is to say, the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection, and is not perfected by what we shall learn to know as a scientific habit.

  Jacques Maritain

  Reflection, Light, Common Sense

  Jacques Maritain (2005). “An EPZ Introduction to Philosophy”, p.80, A&C Black

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• There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.

  Jacques Maritain

  Men, Desire, Heroism

  "True Humanism". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. xi), 1938.

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• 

  Two things people throughout history have had in common are hatred and humour. I am proud that I have been able to use humour to lessen people's hatred.

  Richard Pryor

  Two, People, Hatred

  2004 InThe Scotsman, 5 Jun.

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• The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Rap, Imagination, Feelings

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2016). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1681, eBookIt.com

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• The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

  George VI

  Ideas, Unity, Together

  1927 Opening, as Duke of York, the first Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.

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• After 9-11, the President had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead, by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests, President Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

  Joe Biden

  War, Opportunity, Iraq

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• When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country ... this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Socialist Countries, People

  Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy" by Matthew J. Ouimet, 2003.

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• Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Real, Order, Judgement

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.353, Harvard University Press

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• No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reality, Ignorant, Mind

  "I Have Landed". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts", p. 48, May 14, 2002.

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• It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

  James Russell Lowell

  Book, Practice, Class

  Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, Henry Cabot Lodge (1849). “The North American Review”, p.212

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• A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.

  James Russell Lowell

  Common Sense, Profound, Genius

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.132

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• We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

  William James

  Believe, Fighting, Fire

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

  William James

  Lonely, Men, Needs

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.

  Andre Maurois

  Simple, Jargon, Philosopher

  "The Art of Writing". Book by Andre Maurois, 1960.

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• Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.

  Mark Twain

  Law, Insanity, Want

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2441, GENERAL PRESS

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• Common sense is not an issue in politics--it's an affliction.

  Will Rogers

  Issues, Common Sense, Affliction

  Will Rogers (1980). “Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Harding”

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• It is men of desperate fortunes on the one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who go abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road.

  Daniel Defoe

  Adventure, Men, Hands

  Daniel Defoe (1719). “The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner”, p.10

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• Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.

  Margaret Mead

  Blue, Other Cultures, Careers

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• All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

  Isaac Asimov

  Choices, Insanity, Humanity

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