
“Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 7
Source: Common Sense
“Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 7
As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/socialism-hot-right-now/ (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary
1990s
1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)
“Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?”
NS is the third book in the "Jerusalem Quartet"
Nile Shadows (1983)
“That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law.”
Writing for the court, Peak v. United States, 353 U.S. 43 (1957)
Judicial opinions
“But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done.”
1860s, Interview with Alexander W. Randall and Joseph T. Mills (1864)
Context: My enemies say I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. It is and will be carried on so long as I am President for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done.
Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).
Wakefield's Case (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 736.