Common Sense Quotes - Page 30

• The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Wisdom, Country, Mistake

  Address at Oglethorpe University, 22 May (1932)

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• People just want to hear some common sense... and I bring to bear the experience in local government and state government and national government - I was the first woman in history on the Senate Finance Committee - not to mention the diplomatic international experience.

  Carol Moseley Braun

  Government, People, Want

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• Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Book, Religion, Trying

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• But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said, "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Believe, Party, Thinking

  News conference in Washington, D.C., on October 05, 1956. "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower". Book by Dwight D. Eisenhower, p. 862, 1961.

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• The free system of government we have established is so congenial with reason, with common sense, and with a universal feeling, that it must produce approbation and a desire of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth to the knowledge of nations.

  James Madison

  Government, Feelings, Desire

  Letter to Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau (James Madison papers, Library of Congress), January 23, 1826.

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• The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common sense. He feels, with Copernicus, that as God waited long for an interpreter, so he can wait for his followers.

  Wendell Phillips

  Ideas, Numbers, Long

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• Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it's an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.

  Christopher McDougall

  Spring, Psychology, Heroism

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• Fundamentalists are less concerned to be systematic and rational than to be humble and faithful, accepting God's commandments because they come from God, not because they proceed from common sense or sophisticated reason.

  Israel Shenker

  Humble, Humility, Accepting God

  Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books

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• If you could once make up your mind never to undertake more work ... than you can carry on calmly, quietly, without hurry or flurry ... and if the instant you feel yourself growing nervous and ... out of breath, you would stop and take a breath, you would find this simple common-sense rule doing for you what no prayers or tears could ever accomplish.

  Elizabeth Prentiss

  Prayer, Work, Simple

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• The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste.

  Peter McWilliams

  Struggle, Years, Law

  Peter McWilliams (1996). “Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• The doctor will persist in laboring under the delusion that patients want common sense instead of magic.

  Rae Foley

  Doctors, Magic, Want

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• As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

  Catharine Beecher

  People, Soul, Liberty

  Catharine Esther Beecher (1864). “Religious Training of Children in the School, the Family, and the Church”, p.212

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• The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly.

  Melissa Bean

  Responsibility, Past, People

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• So robots are good at very simple things like cleaning the floor, like doing a repetitive task. Our robots have a little tiny bit of common sense. Our robots know that if they've got something in their hand and they drop it, it's gone. They shouldn't go and try and put it down.

  Rodney Brooks

  Simple, Hands, Trying

  "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans and Robots in the Economy". Council on Foreign Relations Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Annual Lecture on Science and Technology, www.cfr.org. February 27, 2015.

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• When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.

  Thomas Szasz

  Jesus, Men, People

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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 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, Psychology, Sides

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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, Different

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

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• The most uncommon form of intelligence is common sense.

  Evan Esar

  Common, Form, Uncommon

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• There's only one kind of common sense but a thousand varieties of stupidity.

  Evan Esar

  Stupidity, Kind, Thousand

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• Common sense is usually lack of imagination, and imagination is usually lack of common sense.

  Evan Esar

  Imagination, Common, Lack Of Common Sense

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• Common sense is better than genius, and hence its bestowment is more universal.

  Horace Mann

  Genius, Common, Universal

  Horace Mann (1872). “Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann ...”, p.50

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• His (Deschamps') complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Lying, Government, Hypocrisy

  Barbara Tuchman (2017). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.539, Penguin UK

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• Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change.

  Alexander Pope

  Loss, Men, Gold

  Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson (1812). “The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in Verse and Prose: With a Selection of Explanatory Notes”, p.227

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• the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Becoming, Favour

  John Ruskin (1938). “Unto this last: and other essays”

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