Common Sense quotes

Common Sense

768 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Common Sense quotes (page 9 of 39)

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Henry Miller Novelist, Essayist
Common Sense

"We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong."

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Lord Byron Poet, Novelist
Common Sense

"The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch."

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Cheryl Strayed Author, Memoirist
Common Sense

"...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy."

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Alfred North Whitehead Philosopher, Mathematician
Common Sense

"The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure."

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Olivia Newton-John Singer, Actress
Common Sense

"When you have a cavity in your tooth and you let it get worse, eventually you have to get a root canal. If you have something that isn't right, the earlier you treat it the easier the treatment is going to be. That's kind of common sense."

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Astrophysicist, Science Communicator
Common Sense

"A common way to compute density is, of course, to take the ratio of an object's mass to its volume. But other types of densities exist, such as the resistance of somebody's brain to the imparting of common sense."

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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Common Sense

"Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Common Sense

"There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me."

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Herman Cain Businessman, Politician
Common Sense

"I'm not a professional politician. I'm a professional problem solver, and I believe we should cut the salaries of senators and congressmen 10 percent until they balance the budget. I call that conservative common sense."

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Jane Welsh Carlyle Essayist, Writer
Common Sense

"The longer I live, the more I am certified that men, in all that relates to their own health, have not common sense! whether it be their pride, or their impatience, or their obstinancy, or their ingrained spirit of contradiction, that stupefies and misleads them, the result is always a certain amount of idiocy, or distraction in their dealings with their own bodies! ... either by their wild impatience of bodily suffering, and the exaggerated moan they make over it, or else by their reckless defiance of it, and neglect of every dictate of prudence!"

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Honore de Balzac Novelist
Common Sense

"I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense."

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D. H. Lawrence Novelist, Poet
Common Sense

"I can give you a spirit love, I have given you this long, long time; but not embodied passion. See, you are a nun. I have given you what I would give a holy nun...In all our relations no body enters. I do not talk to you through the senses - rather through the spirit. That is why we cannot love in the common sense."

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