
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 387-388
"Sermons in Cats the musical"
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
While signing the Bill Providing Restitution for the Wartime Internment of Japanese-American Civilians, quoting himself at the funeral of Kazuo Masuda in December 1945 (10 August 1988) http://history.wisc.edu/archdeacon/404tja/redress.html
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
Context: Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.
Dijkstra (1998) https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html
1990s
1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)
Context: From its very beginning our country has been enriched by a complete blend of varied strains in the same ethnic family. We are, in some sense, an immigrant nation, molded in the fires of a common experience. That common experience is our history. And it is that common experience we must hand down to our children, even as the fundamental principles of Americanism, based on righteousness, were handed down to us, in perpetuity, by the founders of our government.