Common Sense Quotes

“The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient worldviews, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man's perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective ways of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone is your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not the other?”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“What it takes to do a job will not be learned from management courses. It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense — none of which can be taught in a classroom... Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done.”
― Hyman G. Rickover

“[He was aware] of the value of the word of praise dropped at exactly the right moment; and he would have thought himself extremely stupid to withhold what cost him so little and was productive of such desirable results.”
― Georgette Heyer, Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle

“Never put yourself in a position to be made an example of.”
― Gary Hopkins

“There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
[...]
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore ..."

(The Russians)”
― Sting, The Dream of the Blue Turtles

“In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.”
― Michael Faraday

“UNDIVIDED

I am for
One world undivided.
One world without fear and corruption.
One world ruled by Truth and Justice.

I am for
One peaceful world for all,
Where hate has been overcome by love,
And everyone is guided only
By their conscience.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“You can catch more flies with honey than with sour milk”
― Kiran Desai, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

“Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.”
― An Wang

“The accident in your rearview mirror already happened. The one in front of you is still preventable. Pay attention.”
― Nakia R. Laushaul

“Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left — sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too fierce to be sensible.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“Threatened men live long.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“If you want to be sure of unusual thing such as aliens or UFOs,
then you have to think about it from an unusual way of thinking.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“When we use these words and we talk about plants having a strategy to do this or wanting this or desiring this, we’re being metaphorical obviously. I mean, plants do not have consciousness. But, this is a fault of our own vocabulary. We don’t have a very good vocabulary to describe what others species do to us, because we think we’re the only species that really does anything.”
― Michael Pollan

“The history of science is the saga of nature defying common sense.”
― Kedar Joshi

“Never raise your hand to your children - it leaves your midsection unprotected”
― Robert Orben

“That human life is but a first installment of the serial soul and that one's individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

“Miracles define common sense.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
― St. Jerome, The Principal Works of St. Jerome

“His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. He had, on the other other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“Science is a tool of Common Sense. When we insist that all valid information come from science or doctors, Common Sense becomes uncommon or lost forever.”
― Richard Diaz

“There will come a time in every girl's life when she realizes that your ex-girlfriend wasn't crazy. Actually, she was right (about you).”
― Nakia R. Laushaul

“One must have common sense, nothing is permanent, nothing endures. I have come to the conclusion that this place is run by a madman. A madman, let me tell you, can be very logical. If you are rich and logical and also mad, you can succeed for a very long time in living out your illusion. But in the end....in the end this will break up. Because, you see, it is not reasonable what happens here! That which is not reasonable must always pay the reckoning in the end.

~Dr. Barron”
― Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown

“Apparently, for some reason known only to themselves, these people... have chosen to cling to hydrocarbon-fueled power generation well past the point at which they could have replaced it with nuclear generation.”
― David Weber, Out of the Dark

“In four months we could actually have an administration that believes in science.”
― Mark Warner

“Normalization takes place not because there is Western-ideology that normalizes third-world texts in any special way (other than the usual play with exoticism) but because this academic seeks to domesticate everything, even Marx.”
― Aijaz Ahmad

“You know that when Irving puts the dog in the car, it is no longer in the yard. When Edna goes to church, her head goes with her. If Doug is in the house, he must have gone through some opening unless he was born there and never left. If Sheila is alive at 9 A.M. and is alive at 5 P.M., she was also alive at noon. Zebras in the wild never wear underwear. Opening a jar of a new brand of peanut butter will not vaporize the house. People never shove meat thermometers in their ears. A gerbil is smaller than Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of progress.

One class lives to the utility of the symbol, as the majority of men do, regarding health and wealth as the chief good. Another class live about this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist and the sensual school in philosophy. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified and these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third spiritual perception.

I see in society the neophytes of all these classes, the class especially of young men who in their best knowledge of the sign have a misgiving that there is yet an unattained substance and they grope and sigh and aspire long in dissatisfaction, the sand-blind adorers of the symbol meantime chirping and scoffing and trampling them down. I see moreover that the perfect man - one to a millennium - if so many, traverses the whole scale and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty; and lastly wears it lightly as a robe which he can easily throw off, for he sees the reality and divine splendor of the inmost nature bursting through each chink and cranny.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II: 1836-1838

“For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam’s front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters?

And God looked upon the Creation in all its delightful multiplicity, and saw that, all in all, it was quite Amiable.”
― Vera Nazarian, Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons