Common Sense quotes
768 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside common sense — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense."
"Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers."
"Common sense is as rare as genius."
"In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again."
"I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general."
"I suppose, yes, I've been guilty of provocation but it's also just common sense marketing - put a bottle of scent in a woman's cleavage, or between her thighs - and men will notice."
"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant."
"High politic is only common sense applied to great things."
"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."
"This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant."
"Common sense is so very simple but very difficult to grasp."
"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."
"As a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense."
"The best prophet is common sense, our native wit."
"The idea of storage as a solution of economic problems at least has the support of common sense.It is diametrically opposed to the topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning that has marked so much of our depression thinking and policy."
"The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense."
"The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens."
"Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen."
"May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!"
"That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion."
