common sense

The greatest asset of a man, a business or a nation is faith. The men who built this country and those who made it prosper during its darkest days were men whose faith in its future was unshakable. Men of courage, they dared to go forward despite all hazards; men of vision, they always looked forward, never backward. Christianity, the greatest institution humanity has ever known, was founded by twelve men, limited in education, limited in resources, but with an abundance of faith and divine leadership. The vision essential to clear thinking; the common sense needed for wise decisions; the courage of convictions based on facts not fancies; and the constructive spirit of faith as opposed to the destructive forces of doubt will preserve our Christian ways of life.

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. 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.

Though conditions have grown puzzling in their complexity, though changes have been vast, yet we may remain absolutely sure of one thing; that now as ever in the past, and as it will ever be in-the future, there can be no substitute for elemental virtues, for the elemental qualities to which we allude when we speak of a man, not only as a good man, but as emphatically a man. We can build up the standard of individual citizenship and individual well-being, we can raise the national standard and make it what it can and shall be made, 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.

Young men, of course, don't want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: "Use your common sense rather than book instructions."

. . . Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise creator of the universe, and in his own inability - like the boy on the seashore - to fathom the entire ocean in all its depths. He therefore believed that there were not only many things in heaven beyond his philosophy, but plenty on earth as well, and he made it his business to understand for himself what the majority of intelligent men of his time accepted without dispute (to them it was as natural as common sense) - the traditional account of the creation.

Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.

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

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.