A world in which men know that most of what they know is probably untrue cannot be dignified with the name of a sceptical world; it is simply an impotent and abject world, not attacking anything, but accepting everything while trusting nothing; accepting even its own incapacity to attack; accepting its own lack of authority […]
Common Sense Quotes
Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
Common sense is perhaps the most equally divided, but surely the most underemployed, talent in the world.
When the philosopher’s argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.
Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
It may be that without a vision men shall die. It is no less true that, without hard practical sense, they shall also die. Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would have been killed in body.
Common sense is, of all kinds, the most uncommon. It implies good judgment, sound discretion, and true and practical wisdom applied to common life.
Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
