Commonsensical Quotes & Sayings

The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust ... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change. — E.B. White

Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street
a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American. — Roger Lowenstein

The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and commonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time - a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. — Alan W. Watts

When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present. — Eknath Easwaran

While accessory items and embedded features help minimize driver distraction, nothing replaces simple common-sense when using a cell phone in the car. Pull over to the side of the road to dial manually, know the features and functions of your phone before you drive and allow voice mail to pick up your calls if you are driving - these are all simple and commonsensical steps we can all take to minimize distraction from in-car cell phone use. — Gary Shapiro

Here, as in so many other cases, however, it turns out that a very commonsensical idea looks far less attractive when one examines some of the experimental work which is not available to us from the armchair. — Hilary Kornblith

Non-aqueous solutions don't conduct. — Wolfgang Ostwald

Externalists reject any such view. I think that the idea that we can tell, simply by way of reflection, whether our beliefs are justified, is deeply commonsensical. More than that, the idea that responsible epistemic agents ought to reflect on their beliefs, and hold them only if they somehow pass muster, is utterly natural. — Hilary Kornblith

This was an unpleasant trend. I didn't want a lot of guys popping in and out of my bedroom. I wanted one who would stay. — Charlaine Harris

If you believe in God, trust that the Most High will get you through the day. If you are a commonsensical individual, step into the actuality of building this day with your own hands, for you are the architect of this day. But most are categorized as exiguous individuals, so believe in your sciolism, to guide you through the day. — Lionel Suggs

If I wasn't plagued by needing to write things, that would perhaps be a blessing. — Conor McPherson

Eat your vegetables. Brush your teeth. Sweat once in a while. Get plenty of rest. Don't smoke. Laugh more. There are certain tenets to health that are pretty commonsensical and that we all know we should practice routinely. — David Perlmutter

And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America's engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare. — Mitt Romney

Nintendo not letting itself make a browser Mario game has not stopped a flash flood of in-browser Mario games. Super Mario Flash, New Super Mario Bros. Flash, Infinite Mario, and the amazing Super Mario Crossover, which lets you play the original SMB games using characters from Castlevania, Excitebike, Ninja Gaidan, and more. (If you like that, try Abobo's Big Adventure.) There are free (and unlicensed) Mario games where he rides a motorbike, takes a shotgun to the Mushroom Kingdom, decides to fight with his fists, is replaced by Sonic, replaces Pac-Man in a maze game, and plays dress-up. They receive no admonition from Nintendo's once-ferocious legal department. Why not? Iwata's explanation is commonsensical: "[I]t would not be appropriate if we treated people who did someone based on affection for Nintendo as criminals." This is also why no one has been told by lawyers to stop selling Wario-as-a-pimp T-shirts. — Jeff Ryan

In the '90s, the radio was still alive with all different kinds of points of view, and I think that's why people are longing for that time. It was the first time that alternative music broke through to the mainstream. — Shirley Manson

I'm just happy to do projects I'm passionate about. — Selena Gomez

But heart's desires? My dear, I see by your misery - by this very request you are making - that you know more of true men's and women's hearts than once you did, than your mother's world permitted you to see. Such chipped and cracked and outright broken things they are, are they not? They have their illnesses too, and their impulses. And hearts are not always connected well to minds, and even if they are, minds are not always clear and commonsensical. A heart may desire a thing powerfully indeed, but that heart's desire might be what a person least needs, for her health, for her continuing happiness. — Margo Lanagan

I am constructing here a commonsensical book from which nothing at all can be learned. There are, to be sure, persons who wish to extract from books guiding principles for their lives. For this most estimable individual I am therefore, to my gigantic regret, not writing. Is that a pity? Oh yes. O you driest, most upright, virtuous and respectable, kindest, quietest of adventurers- slumber sweetly, for the while. — Robert Walser

But Maine is a special place: there's something about untold acres of natural beauty in concert with an underachieving public school system that leads to deviations from the customary and commonsensical. — William Giraldi

The pros-and-cons approach is familiar. It is commonsensical. And it is also profoundly flawed. — Chip Heath

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. — James Hansen