quotations about common sense
Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.
RENÉ DESCARTES
Discours de la Méthode
One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it.
PERSIAN PROVERB
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
Often, there is a temptation not to conduct research because the answer to a question is "common sense." Unfortunately, common sense is not so common and is often wrong.
MICHAEL G. AAMODT
Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Common sense is the average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual peculiarities.
W. R. ALGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
When common sense sees a puzzling phenomenon it looks for a causal agent. When it sees organization it looks for an organizer. This works amazingly well for purposes ranging from the diagnosis of diseases to the creation of governments. But it cannot account for emergence ... the appearance of complex phenomena not predictable from the basic elements and processes alone.
CARL BEREITER
Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age
Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.
VICTOR HUGO
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it--even if I have said it--unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
PETER USTINOV
attributed, Treasury of Wisdom
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
A Writer's Notebook
Common sense is a kind of intuitive judgment that some men possess, enabling them to give good advice upon most matters. It is gained by close observation, which stores the mind with a stock of useful knowledge, and the happy tact of using the same as opportunities arise.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
The only thing a person can never have too much of is common sense.
KATHRYN SMITH
Anna and the Duke
Whenever a man boasts much about [his common sense], you may be pretty sure
that he has very little sense, either common or uncommon.
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE
Essays
Common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself, enriching itself with scientific ideas and with philosophical opinions which have entered ordinary life.
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Prison Notebooks
Common sense may be compared to a young plant: it needs careful training and perpetual airing, to keep it in good health and cause it to blossom and bear fruit.
MRS. S. WESLEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The best prophet is common sense.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Explaining One's Self to Others: Reason-Giving in a Social Context
If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense, too, he is not far from genius.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Common Sense and Education: The more you think you have of one, the less you think you need of the other.
TOM HEEHLER
The Well-Spoken Thesaurus
Common sense is the folklore of philosophy.
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Prison Notebooks
The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, that is to say, the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection, and is not perfected by what we shall learn to know as a scientific habit.
JACQUES MARITAIN
An EPZ Introduction to Philosophy