Common Sense Quotes

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

In this world, the greatest rewards of success, wealth and happiness are usually obtained not through the exercise of special powers such a genius or intellect but through one's energetic use of simple means and ordinary qualities.

Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one 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.

The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Common sense is very uncommon.

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

Common sense is almost as omniscient as God.

But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

No Ghost of any common sense begins a conversation

Common sense is not so common.

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

A rigid, fanatic, ambitious, selfishly partisan and sectional turncoat with too much genius and too little common sense, who will either die a traitor or a madman.

The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.

Sometimes street knowledge can be as important as book knowledge.

I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness - nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.

Wisdom is not the province of only one party.

A proverb is one man’s wit and all men’s wisdom.