As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 52 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&client=safari&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false; this has also been paraphrased as "It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
1940s–present
Context: In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.
In the matter of Van Gelder's Patent (1888), 6 Rep. Pat. Cas. 28
2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)
“For all Men would be Cowards if they durst:
And Honesty’s against all common Sense.”
ll. 158-159.
A Satire Against Mankind (1679)
“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
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago
Source: Theory of Economic Dynamics (1965), Chapter 4, Profits and Investments, p. 55
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: The spectacle of to-morrow is one of agony. Wise men make laughable efforts to determine what may be, in the ages to come, the cause of the inhabited world's end. Will it be a comet, the rarefaction of water, or the extinction of the sun, that will destroy mankind? They have forgotten the likeliest and nearest cause — Suicide.
They who say, "There will always be war," do not know what they are saying. They are preyed upon by the common internal malady of shortsight. They think themselves full of common-sense as they think themselves full of honesty. In reality, they are revealing the clumsy and limited mentality of the assassins themselves.
The shapeless struggle of the elements will begin again on the seared earth when men have slain themselves because they were slaves, because they believed the same things, because they were alike.
“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense…”
The Fabric of Reality (1997)
Duke, Miracles, p. 2
Source: 1990s, The Notebook (1996)
