This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There can be no substitute for elemental virtues... only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common-sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Common sense is not so common." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind." - William Hazlitt
"The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it; the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now." - W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
"We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year." - Edwin Herbert Land
"The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization. " - F. L. Lucas, fully Frank Laurence "F. L." Lucas
"A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Is it worse to kill someone than to let someone die? It seems obvious to common sense that it is worse. We allow people to die, for example, when we fail to contribute money to famine-relief efforts; but even if we feel somewhat guilty, we do not consider ourselves murderers. Nor do we feel like accessories to murder when we fail to give blood, sign an organ-donor card, or do any of the other things that could save lives. Common sense tells us that, while we may not kill people, our duty to give them aid is much more limited." - James Rachels
"The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make. To establish appropriate timing for a decision, first discern the connection between the needs around you and the calling within you. When assessing the ramifications for decisions, leaders must take into account the repercussions of failure. Plain common sense can be the best deterrent to far-fetched opportunities. All too often, would-be decision-makers take too much time collecting, analyzing and reanalyzing information, hoping for that one last convincing detail that will dictate the correct choice. Consider if the passage of time shrinks available options or creates new ones." - John C. Maxwell
"The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression. To be able to carry on their production and studies effectively and to arrange their lives properly, the people want their government and those in charge of production and of cultural and educational organizations to issue appropriate orders of an obligatory nature. It is common sense that the maintenance of public order would be impossible without such administrative regulations. Administrative orders and the method of persuasion and education complement each other in resolving contradictions among the people. Even administrative regulations for the maintenance of public order must be accompanied by persuasion and education, for in many cases regulations alone will not work." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
"The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction? That's a government subsidy of families, yet we resent putting money directly into public housing. We take our deduction for dependent care yet resent putting money directly into child care. Common sense and necessity are beginning to erode old notions of the private invasion of family life, because so many families are in trouble. " - Marian Wright Edelman
"Stand often in the company of dreamers: they tickle your common sense & believe you can achieve things which are impossible." - Mary Anne Radmacher
"Remorse is the voice of common sense the moment of error." - Mustapha Mahmoud
"The most practical thing in the world is common sense and common humanity." - Nancy Astor, fully Lady Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess Astor
"Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice. " - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them; but others are so noble, illustrious, miraculous, and mysterious that the intellect can make no sense of them and finds them unpalatable. The human intellect is only capable of tackling mediocre subjects: it disdains petty subjects, and is startled by large ones. There is no reason to be surprised if it finds any religion hard to accept at first, for all are deficient in the mediocre and the commonplace, nor that it should require skill to induce belief. For the strong intellect laughs at religion, while the weak and superstitious mind marvels at it but is easily scandalized by it." - Pierre Charron
"The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which of times they are unable to account. " - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation." - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
"May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers." - Albert Einstein
"Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
"Yes, said Mamma, this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less; indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred." - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
"Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have." - René Descartes
"You could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer." - Richard Dawkins
"If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional and common sense continual." - Robertson Davies
"If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all... why then perhaps we must stand fast a little --even at the risk of being heroes." - Robert Oxton Bolt
"The aim is union with God in the memory. #2. Images will always help a person toward union with God, provided he allows himself to soar – when God bestows the favor – from the painted image to the living God." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
"Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime." - Samuel Butler
"One’s age should be tranquil, as one’s childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence seems to me out of place: the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at mid-day the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." - Thomas Arnold
"No society can make a perpetual Constitution... The Earth belongs always to the living generation." - Thomas Jefferson
"Private property is a legal convention, defined in part by the tax system; therefore, the tax system cannot be evaluated by looking at its impact on private property, conceived as something that has independent existence and validity. Taxes must be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular tax regime." - Thomas Nagel
"Every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of a man." - Thomas Reid
"And love is love, in beggars and in kings. " - Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
"The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it's in the way that it's spent." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"This country just civic luncheoned itself into depression. If they will all go home and eat with their own families, they will not only get their first good lunch in years, but will be surprised how much more intelligently their own wife can talk than the “speaker of the day.”" - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"You can’t say that civilization don’t advance... in every war they kill you in a new way." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. (The Vane Sisters)" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Perfect is the enemy of good." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness." - Victor Hugo
"Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do." - William James
"We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can… in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life… The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work." - William James
"We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment" - Edwin Percy Whipple
"Only they have to weep bitter tears who know what has come to them is the result of their foolish conduct, their ignorant way, their want of proper understanding of life and what love means." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch