Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

People are not stupid.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.

Not to sound corny, but intelligence is big. Everything fades, and everything can be modified. But intelligence is something you can't fake. I'm not even talking about whether you can read a thesaurus backwards. But there is a beauty in common sense.

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions.

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

... common sense is very rare.

I think people got more common sense than people give 'em credit for.

A lot of clever people have got everything except judgement

You mustn't underestimate an audience's intelligence.

Common sense varies among the young, as among the old.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent.

A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.

Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.