The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)
Context: There is, however, a much more convincing argument that needs to be put on the table before we really begin turning common sense upside down. It is the overwhelming reason to prefer science to ordinary beliefs, common sense, and direct experience. Science is just common sense continually improving itself, rebuilding itself, until it is no longer recognizable as common sense. It is easy to miss this fact about science without studying a lot of history of science—and not the stories about science, but the succession of actual scientific theories and how common sense was both their mother and their midwife.
“Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.”
The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.
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Miranda July 70
American performance artist, musician and writer 1974Related quotes
“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: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 23-25
Context: The Adlerians, in the name of “individual psychology,” take the side of society against the individual. … Adler’s later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. “Our science … is based on common sense.” Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.
“All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.”
"On the Study of Biology" (1876) http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=All+truth,+in+the+long+run,+is+only+common+sense+clarified.+huxley+On+the+Study+of+Biology&source=bl&ots=87sGwjauQT&sig=pEmWoYQoN8HUVIVU6WSrnAAM8Dc&hl=en&ei=hFcnStrlM5H0tQPG-NBH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
1870s
“Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.”
Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 542.
Essays and reviews, Clive James On Television (1991)
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 14. How I Vainly Tried to Explain the Nature of Flatland
"World of Wonders".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Context: A sense of wonder is in itself a religious feeling. But in so many people the sense of wonder gets lost. It gets scarred over. It's as though a tortoise shell has grown over it. People reach a stage where they're never surprised, never delighted. They're never suddenly aware of glorious freedom or splendour in their lives. This is very unhappy, very unfortunate. The attitude is often self-induced. It is fear. People are afraid to be happy.