Quotes about common sense

"Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on common sense   

"Common sense is calculation applied to life."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on common sense   

"The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next."

Beecher, Henry Ward on common sense   

"Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective skepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common-sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common-sense is destroyed. Common-sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of inquiry, from philosophy."

Berger, John on common sense   

"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done."

Billings, Josh on common sense   

"Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on common sense   

"The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is."

Butler, Samuel on common sense   

"Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up."

Chandler, Raymond on common sense   

"Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses."

Da Vinci, Leonardo on common sense
3 fans of this quote   

"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has."

Descartes, Rene on common sense   

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

Einstein, Albert on common sense
5 fans of this quote   

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on common sense
8 fans of this quote   

"Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on common sense   

"The best prophet is common sense, our native wit."

Euripides on common sense   

"There is nothing a man of good sense dreads in a wife so much as her having more sense than himself."

Fielding, Henry on common sense   

"The common people of America display a quality of good common sense which is heartening to anyone who believes in the democratic process."

Gallup, George on common sense   

"Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on common sense   

"Common sense is the genius of humanity."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on common sense   

"Common Sense is very uncommon."

Greeley, Horace on common sense
3 fans of this quote   

"My greatest strength is... common sense. I'm really a standard brand -- like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate."

Hepburn, Katharine on common sense   

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on common sense   

"Common sense is compelled to make its way without the enthusiasm of anyone."

Howe, Edgar Watson on common sense   

"Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education."

Hugo, Victor on common sense
7 fans of this quote   

"Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense."

Huxley, Thomas H. on common sense   

"All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified."

Huxley, Thomas H. on common sense   

"When two men share an umbrella, both of them get wet."

Isenberg, Michael on common sense   

"A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere."

Kettering, Charles F. on common sense   

"He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them."

Kingsley, Charles on common sense   

"Common Sense is in medicine the master workman."

Latham, Peter on common sense   

"That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along."

L'Engle, Madeleine on common sense   

"When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."

Lincoln, Abraham on common sense
3 fans of this quote   

"The question of common sense is what is it good for? A question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage."

Lowell, James Russell on common sense
3 fans of this quote   

"The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn, tired of common sense and civilization."

Lucan, F. L. on common sense   

"Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult."

Maugham, W. Somerset on 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."

Maugham, W. Somerset on common sense   

"That rarest gift to Beauty, Common Sense!"

Meredith, George on common sense   

"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."

Orwell, George on common sense   

"He who does not have common sense at age thirty will never have it."

Proverb on common sense
4 fans of this quote   

"No one tests the depth of a river with both feet."

Proverb, Ashanti on common sense   

"Common sense hides shame."

Proverb, Gaelic on common sense