quotations about common sense
Common sense is a term used to punish the uninformed, seize the upper hand, and rationalize intellectual superiority without calling the receiver stupid.
P. CARTER EARNSHAW
I Factor: Integrity Matters
There's only one kind of common sense but a thousand varieties of stupidity.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The fact that common sense is generally appealed to rather than defined allows the concept to play a much broader role in everyday life and in social science discourse than its more articulated semantic neighbors such as judgment, knowledge and truth.
FRITS VON HOLTHOON & DAVID R. OLSON
Common Sense: The Foundations for Social Science
Knowledge counts but common sense matters.
LOUANNE JOHNSON
Dangerous Minds
The most uncommon form of intelligence is common sense.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The greatness of common sense, and its title to reverence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complexity, that is, with the innumerable elements of a situation. Common sense discerns and judges a path through this knotted and tangled maze.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
That common sense could be used for teaching people of how to reason doesn't seem implausible, yet common sense mostly tells us just what common sense is and not necessarily how one arrived at common sense or why it is common.
MARION LEDWIG
Common Sense: Its History
Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.
GIAMBATTISTA VICO
The New Science
Common sense is not so common.
VOLTAIRE
Dictionnaire Philosophique
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The man of common-sense never makes a god of logic. Logic is not to him an idol to be worshipped and adored. He cares chiefly for the premises, for he realises that if they are sound a child can draw the inferences.
ANONYMOUS
The Spectator, Feb. 18, 1899
Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly In Senses Different From Their Present
It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Robot
The mind of man has no defense
To equal plain, old common sense.
This homely virtue don't despise,
If you would be happy as well as wise.
ANONYMOUS
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
If common sense were as unerring as calculus, as some suggest, I don't understand why so many mistakes are made so often by so many people.
CARY WINKEL
attributed, Explaining One's Self to Others: Reason-Giving in a Social Context
Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
attributed, Women Know Everything!
Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
WILLIAM JAMES
attributed, Growing Up with Harry
One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it.
PERSIAN PROVERB
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Mathematics, Queen and Servant of the Sciences