Quotes about common (3643 quotes, page 3)

“Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Rien n’est si ordinaire que d’imiter ses ennemis, et d’employer leurs armes.
"Oracles" (1770)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

“A wise Government, allying itself with religion, would, as it were, consecrate society and sanctify the State. But how is this to be done? It is the problem of modern politics which has always most embarrassed statesmen. No solution of the difficulty can be found in salaried priesthoods and complicated concordats. But by the side of the State in England there has gradually arisen a majestic corporation wealthy, powerful, independent with the sanctity of a long tradition, yet sympathising with authority, and full of conciliation, even deference, to the civil power. Broadly and deeply planted in the land, mixed up with all our manners and customs, one of the main guarantees of our local government, and therefore one of the prime securities of our common liberties, the Church of England is part of our history, part of our life, part of England itself.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in Aylesbury (14 November 1861), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 96

Life , Religion , History , Problem

“In addition to the animal essence, we have something that is above animal existence. This something is called our egoism. It is based on our aspirations to wealth, honor, fame, power, and knowledge. Animals do not have these aspirations […] — envy, inclination to pleasures, and aspiration to honor. These aspirations bring a person to a level above the animal. Since they are above animal qualities, these aspirations and qualities are praiseworthy. On the other hand, their common natural utilization puts us below all other levels”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

i.e. still, vegetative, and animate
Introduction to the Book of Zohar, in Introduction to the Book of Zohar: Volume Two, Michael Laitman, ed., Laitman Kabbalah Publishers, 2005, p. 94.
Introduction to the Book of Zohar

Pleasure , Nature , Knowledge , Animals

“Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.' They may admit that in organic chemistry there is need of long words, and that quantum physics requires formulas that are difficult to translate into ordinary English, but philosophy (they think) is different. It is not the function of philosophy – so they maintain – to teach something that uneducated people do not know; on the contrary, its function is to teach superior persons that they are not as superior as they thought they were, and that those who are really superior can show their skill by making sense of common sense. No one wants to alter the language of common sense, any more than we wish to give up talking of the sun rising and setting. But astronomers find a different language better, and I contend that a different language is better in philosophy. Let us take an example, that of perception. There is here an admixture of philosophical and scientific questions, but this admixture is inevitable in many questions, or, if not inevitable, can only be avoided by confining ourselves to comparatively unimportant aspects of the matter in hand. Here is a series of questions and answers.
Q. When I see a table, will what I see be still there if I shut my eyes?
A. That depends upon the sense in which you use the word 'see.'
Q. What is still there when I shut my eyes?
A. This is an empirical question. Don't bother me with it, but ask the physicists.
Q. What exists when my eyes are open, but not when they are shut?
A. This again is empirical, but in deference to previous philosophers I will answer you: colored surfaces.
Q. May I infer that there are two senses of 'see'? In the first, when I 'see' a table, I 'see' something conjectural about which physics has vague notions that are probably wrong. In the second, I 'see' colored surfaces which cease to exist when I shut my eyes.
A. That is correct if you want to think clearly, but our philosophy makes clear thinking unnecessary. By oscillating between the two meanings, we avoid paradox and shock, which is more than most philosophers do.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 159

People , Color , Question , Thinking

“Friends have all things in common.”

Plato book Phaedrus

279
Phaedrus

“We can never say it enough. The United States and the United Kingdom enjoy a truly special relationship. We celebrate a common heritage. We cherish common values.... Above all, our alliance thrives because it advances our common interests.... When the United States and the United Kingdom stand together, our people—and people around the world—are more secure and they are more prosperous. In short, the United States has no closer ally and no stronger partner than Great Britain.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102011166?q=barack+obama&p=par Statement made by U.S. President Barack Obama at a joint press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom in July 2010
2010

People , World

“As historical and social beings we find ourselves always already in a linguistically structured lifeworld. In the forms of communication through which we reach an understanding with one another about something in the world and about ourselves, we encounter a transcending power. Language is not a kind of private property. No one possesses exclusive rights over the common medium of the communicative practices we must intersubjectively share. No single participant can control the structure, or even the course, of processes of reaching understanding and self-understanding. How speakers and hearers make use of their communicative freedom to take yes- or no-positions is not a matter of their subjective discretion. For they are free only in virtue of the binding force of the justifiable claims they raise towards one another. The logos of language embodies the power of the intersubjective, which precedes and grounds the subjectivity of speakers.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (2003) The Future of Human Nature. p. 10

World , Communication , Understanding , Freedom

“I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize — men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.
But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build — a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action — a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by the President on winning the Nobel Peace Prize" (9 October 2009)
2009

Life , Women , Men , People

“Almost every evening [in their common early-Cubist years, in Paris], either I went to Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's paintings. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

a remark of Picasso to Françoise Gilot, December 1948
Quote of Picasso, in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1940's

Painting

“For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism

Justice , Revenge , Sense , Parting

“Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 181-182.

People , Business , Personality

“Mankind has become one, but not steadfastly one as communities or even nations used to be; not united through years of mutual experience, neither through possession of a single eye, affectionately called crooked, nor yet through a common native language, but, surpassing all barriers, through international broadcasting and print. An avalanche of events descends upon us — in one minute half the world hears of their splash. But the yardstick by which to measure those events and to evaluate them in accordance with the laws of unfamiliar parts of the world — this is not and cannot be conveyed via soundwaves and in newspaper columns. For these yardsticks were matured and assimilated over too many years of too specific conditions in individual countries and societies; they cannot be exchanged in mid-air. In the various parts of the world men apply their own hard-earned values to events, and they judge stubbornly, confidently, only according to their own scales of values and never according to any others.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men , World , Law , Confidence

“It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)

Men , Nature

“…a professor in one of the great female colleges. That odious form is common, and I submit and use it, though it offends me as much as it would to say female brickbat or female snow-storm or female geography.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 273

“Absence, that common cure of love.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 10.

Love

“Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.”

Daniel Boone (1734–1820) American settler

As quoted in Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (1993) by John Mack Faragher p. 302

World

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015)
2015

War , People , Truth , Youth

“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” … “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. … The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. …
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. …
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 85-88

Love , Life , Men , God

“Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. Thus no Body has any Right to but himself.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Ch. V, sec. 27
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Men , Personality

“Chemical signs ought to be letters, for the greater facility of writing, and not to disfigure a printed book … I shall take therefore for the chemical sign, the initial letter of the Latin name of each elementary substance: but as several have the same initial letter, I shall distinguish them in the following manner:— 1. In the class which I shall call metalloids, I shall employ the initial letter only, even when this letter is common to the metalloid and to some metal. 2. In the class of metals, I shall distinguish those that have the same initials with another metal, or a metalloid, by writing the first two letters of the word. 3. If the first two letters be common to two metals, I shall, in that case, add to the initial letter the first consonant which they have not in common: for example, S = sulphur, Si = silicium, St = stibium (antimony), Sn = stannum (tin), C = carbonicum, Co = colbaltum (colbalt), Cu = cuprum (copper), O = oxygen, Os = osmium, &c.”

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) Swedish chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Essay on the Cause of Chemical Proportions, and on some circumstances relating to them: together with a short and easy method of expressing them', Annals of Philosophy, 1814, 3,51-2.

Books

“No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Theory held by Disraeli, cited in Sir William Fraser, Disraeli and his Day (1891), p. 142.
Sourced but undated

Housing

“Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power — absolutely non-democratic — reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Banquet Speech

World , Democracy , Thinking

“All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort - a sustained effort - to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Children , World , Question , Effort

“The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 19

Idea , Understanding , Help

“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense…”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

Sense

“You know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say — let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech following the Minnesota primary (3 June 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/obama.speech/index.html
2008

Children , Dreams , Effort , Future

“Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. … It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Goethe; or, the Writer" writes of this passage, and quotes a slightly different translation: The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:" — and yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.
Novalis (1829)

Books , Imagination , History , Nature

“A very important factor which is making it almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact is that the Muslims can not confine their patriotism to any one country. I had frankly asked (the Muslims) whether in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they (Muslims) would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land. I was not satisfied with the reply I got from them… Even such a man as Mr. Mohammad Ali (one of the famous Ali brothers, the leaders of the Khilafat Movement-the compiler) has declared that under no circumstances is it permissible for any Mohammedan, whatever be his country, to stand against any Mohammedan.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Rabindranath Tagore, Interview of Rabindranath Tagore in `Times of India', 18-4-1924 in the column, `Through Indian Eyes on the Post Khilafat Hindu Muslim Riots http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html Also in A. Ghosh: "Making of the Muslim Psyche" in Devendra Swamp (ed.), Politics of Conversion, New Delhi, 1986, p. 148. And in S.R. Goel, Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987).

Country

“Dragon is the category of primate predator. Predator is a weird category, right? Because there's crocodiles in it, and then there's lions. And they don't have much in common except that they eat you. So it's a functional category. So the dragon is the imagistic representation of the functional category of predator. It's like this: If you're a monkey, then a bird will pick you off, like an eagle. That's the wings. If it wasn't an eagle, then it was a cat (dragon claws), because they climb trees and give you a good chomping. And if it wasn't a cat, then you go down to the ground and a snake would get you, or maybe the snake would climb up the tree. So a dragon is a cat-snake-bird. And that's the thing that you really want to avoid. An the other thing is that it breathes fire, which is interesting because fire was both greatest friend and greatest enemy of humanity.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Cats , Bird , Tree

“When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.”

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly

Justice and fraternity, in Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1848, page 324.
Justice and Fraternity (1848)

Nature , Effort

“Books, like conversation, rarely give us any precise ideas: nothing is so common as to read and converse unprofitably. We must here repeat what Locke has so strongly urged—Define your terms.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

"Abuse of Words" http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35621/35621-h/35621-h.htm (1764)
C.f. Locke: "The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition; the names of all complex ideas are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by anybody what words are, and what are not, capable of being defined; the want whereof is (as I am apt to think) not seldom the occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men's discourses, whilst some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined; and others think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by a more general word, and its restriction, (or to speak in terms of art, by a genus and difference), when, even after such definition, made according to rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the meaning of the word than they had before."
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) Book III http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book3.html, chapter 4
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Books , Idea , Reading

“The story of Adam and Eve represents the fruit as producing a psychological transformation. So the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an abstraction across trees, and it's trying to say: 'Here's something that's common across trees, it's a fruit that's common across trees.' The fruit that's common across trees is something that you might call food, fair enough. But here's something that's even more cool: food that's stable across the entire domain of food, isn't food – it's information. We use the same bloody circuits in our brain to forage for information, that animals use to forage for information. Why is that? Because we figured out knowing where the food is, is more important than having the food… That's why we're information foragers.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s

Food , Knowledge , Tree , Evil

“The most common term in the New Testament for Jesus Christ is again Lord in the Greek Kyrios; Lord. What does it mean? It means sovereign. It means absolute owner so that if we have a Lord we are His property. To confess Jesus Christ as Lord is to declare that we belong to Him in all that we are and in all that we have. We give ourselves, we give our children, we give our property, we give our income, everything, it belongs to the Lord and we are stewards of that which we are and that which we posses under Him. God is the Lord. Jesus Christ is the lord. This is the basic confession of all of scripture. The basic term; let me repeat applied to God the Father and to God the son in all of scripture is Lord. The term is used so much so that it probably outnumbers all other terms used for God. Lordship. It means sovereignty. Dominion means the exercise of authority under a sovereign.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dominion (n. d.)

God , Children , Exercises , Christ

“These principles [in art], forgotten over time, were rediscovered by a few geniuses such as Rembrandt, Vélazquez, Délacroix, Corot and Manet. These principles can be deduced from innate principles within us, ideas of harmony, common to all unspoiled men.... these are the laws of harmony and color.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

Men , Law , Art , Color

“I have that confidence in the common sense, I will say the common spirit of our countrymen, that I believe they will not long endure this huckstering tyranny of the Treasury Bench—these political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market, and sold us in the dearest. I know, Sir, that there are many who believe that the time is gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know, Sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling—stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted with economic fancies; a depraved desire that the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and toil. I know, Sir, that all confidence in public men is lost. But, Sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character. It may be vain now, in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness; it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great, and which, in our belief, can alone keep England great. Then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the "good old cause"—the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national—the cause of labour—the cause of the people—the cause of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Men , People , Faith , Confidence

“There is no subject in which I have taken a deeper interest than the condition of the working classes. Long before what is called the 'condition of the people question' was discussed in the House of Commons, I had employed my pen on the subject. I had long been aware that there was something rotten in the core of our social system. I had seen that while immense fortunes were accumulating, while wealth was increasing to a superabundance, and while Great Britain was cited throughout Europe as the most prosperous nation in the world, the working classes, the creators of wealth, were steeped in the most abject poverty and gradually sinking into the deepest degradation.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Shropshire Conservative (31 August 1844), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 629.
1840s

People , World , Question , Housing

“Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on inside. And on and on.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Bennington College address (1970)

Love , People , Books , Art

“I confess I am inclined to believe that an English gentleman—born to business, managing his own estate, administering the affairs of his county, mixing with all classes of his fellowmen, now in the hunting field, now in the railway direction, unaffected, un-ostentatious, proud of his ancestors, if they have contributed to the greatness of our common country—is, on the whole, more likely to form a senator agreeable to the English opinion and English taste than any substitute that has yet been produced.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860;1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 529.

Business , Country

“Of all the characters I've played, I think I have more in common with that guy than with Reilly: Ace of Spies", referring to Carl Fitzgerald in Death in Brunswick.”

Sam Neill (1947) Irish-born New Zealand actor

Who Weekly (New Zealand); 23 August 1993

Death , Guy , Thinking

“What is now combated is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution — is lawful and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it, and nothing should ever be implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased with money the countries out of which several of these States were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding States in common with the rest. Is it just either that creditors shall go unpaid or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Money , Peace , Law , Parting

“But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Mais qu’un marchand de chameaux excite une sédition dans sa bourgade; qu’associé à quelques malheureux coracites il leur persuade qu’il s’entretient avec l’ange Gabriel; qu’il se vante d’avoir été ravi au ciel, et d’y avoir reçu une partie de ce livre inintelligible qui fait frémir le sens commun à chaque page; que, pour faire respecter ce livre, il porte dans sa patrie le fer et la flamme; qu’il égorge les pères, qu’il ravisse les filles, qu’il donne aux vaincus le choix de sa religion ou de la mort, c’est assurément ce que nul homme ne peut excuser, à moins qu’il ne soit né Turc, et que la superstition n’étouffe en lui toute lumière naturelle.
Referring to Muhammad, in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105
Citas

Death , Books , Religion , Angels

“Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

"Collins: Why this scientist believes in God" http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html, editorial, CNN (April 6, 2007)

Study

“Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

School , Way

“The reason why you don't put your hand in the fire is not because of fear, it's because you know you'll get burned. You don't need fear to avoid an unnecessary danger, just a minimum of intelligence and common sense.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Fear , Intelligence , Sense

“Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest.”

Jean Monnet (1888–1979) French political economist regarded by many as a chief architect of European unity

Jean Monnet 1888-1979

Men

“The survival and development of democracy depends not so much on the development of democratic ideals which are wide-spread and strong. Today, more than ever before, democracy depends upon the development of efficient forms of democratic social management and upon the spreading of the skill in such management to the common man.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Frontiers in group dynamics II, 1947, p. 153.

Democracy , Strong , Dependency

“America: A place where we can be a part of something bigger. A place where we can contribute our talents and fulfill our ambitions and secure new opportunity for ourselves and for others. A place where we can retain pride in our heritage, but where we recognize that we have a common creed, a loyalty to these documents, a loyalty to our democracy; where we can criticize our government, but understand that we love it; where we agree to live together even when we don’t agree with each other; where we work through the democratic process, and not through violence or sectarianism to resolve disputes; where we live side by side as neighbors; and where our children know themselves to be a part of this nation, no longer strangers, but the bedrock of this nation, the essence of this nation.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

Love , Children , Democracy , Understanding

“While the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth. Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time, but it cannot be defeated by military intervention alone. It will not be defeated by the maintenance of a permanent defensive counter-terrorism operation, however skillful its leaders and practitioners. It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence and make them understand that our values – pluralistic British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech after the London Bridge attack (4 June 2017)

Hate , People , Truth , Religion

“The generations of the past failed to unite Serbia and to establish a common Serbian state, which should include all Serbian national, ethnic and historical territories.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

From interview with PTC Б1, 1992
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

Past

“"It would be a crime to exhibit the fine side of war, even if there were one!" murmured one of the somber soldiers.
The first man continued. "They'll say those things to us by way of paying us with glory, and to pay themselves, too, for what they haven't done. But military glory — it isn't even true for us common soldiers. It's for some, but outside those elect the soldier's glory is a lie, like every other fine-looking thing in war. In reality, the soldier's sacrifice is obscurely concealed. The multitudes that make up the waves of attack have no reward. They run to hurl themselves into a frightful inglorious nothing. You cannot even heap up their names, their poor little names of nobodies."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

War , Lie , Way , Reality

“Don’t say: “They must have something in common, or they would not be called ‘games’” but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 66
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Game , Thinking

“Common elements of creativity are originality and imagination. Creativity is intertwined with the freedom to design, to invent and to dream. In engineering and science a creative idea is useful only if it meets three conditions: the constraint of the natural laws, the constraint of cost, and the constraint of technical feasibility.”

Martin Lewis Perl (1927–2014) American scientist

Essay on Creativity in Science and Engineering

Law , Dreams , Imagination , Idea

“Capitalism is the immoral distribution of capital… Germany will become free at that moment when the thirty millions on the left and the thirty millions on the right make common cause. Only one movement is capable of doing this: National Socialism, embodied in one Führer – Adolf Hitler.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Goebbels’ “Lenin or Hitler” speech first delivered on September 17, 1925
1920s

“What happens when everyone in a society is finally beautiful (and healthy)? When the final aesthetic surgery is developed that will make all visages and bodies "perfect"? Will everyone in that society be happy? In examining the discourses of the late nineteenth century on this question, we are confronted with the paradox of François Xavier Bichat, as paraphrased by Charles Darwin: "If everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici (de Milo), we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.””

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

The very search for the improvement of the body (and the concomitant “happiness” of the psyche) must lead to further discontent.
page 39.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

Women , Beauty , Search , Question

“We, as the winners [of WW1 & WW2], created a common country [Yugoslavia] with our enemies [Croats & Muslims], who were on the defeated side [Central Powers & Axis Powers].”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

From interview with PTC Б1, 1992
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

Country

“For us, for our children, Africa and its people teach us a powerful lesson -- that we must uphold the inherent dignity of every human being. Dignity -- that basic idea that by virtue of our common humanity, no matter where we come from, or what we look like, we are all born equal, touched by the grace of God. Every person has worth. Every person matters. Every person deserves to be treated with decency and respect. Throughout much of history, mankind did not see this. Dignity was seen as a virtue reserved to those of rank and privilege, kings and elders. It took a revolution of the spirit, over many centuries, to open our eyes to the dignity of every person. And around the world, generations have struggled to put this idea into practice in laws and in institutions.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

God , Children , People , World

“As soon as an opinion becomes common it is sufficient reason for men to abandon it and to uphold the opposite opinion until that in its turn grows old, and they require to distinguish themselves by other things. Thus if they attain their goal in some art or science, we must expect them soon to cast it aside to acquire some fresh fame, and this is partly the reason why the most splendid ages degenerate so quickly, and, scarcely emerged from barbarism, plunge into it again.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 179.

Men , Age , Art , Science

“Very much screwed in the head by trying to get Roger's marriage chapter into shape; and also warmed by L. saying last night that he was fonder of me than I of him. A discussion as to which would mind the other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I live more in a world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. Its strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Friday 28 April, 1939
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life , Death , Marriage , World

“Shameful it is to say, yet the common herd, if only we admit the truth, value friendships by their profit.”
Turpe quidem dictu, sed, si modo vera fatemur, vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.

Ovid book Epistulae ex Ponto

II, iii, 7-8; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)

Friendship , Truth

“Let's join hands and endeavour to promote development in both China and Africa, improve the well-being of our peoples and build a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity.”

Hu Jintao (1942) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

2000s, China-Africa summit speech (2006)

People , World , Peace

“Oh, yes … I'm really frightfully human and love all mankind, and all that sort of thing. Mankind is truly amusing, when kept at the proper distance. And common men, if well-behaved, are really quite useful. One is a cynick only when one thinks. At such times the herd seems a bit disgusting because each member of it is always trying to hurt somebody else, or gloating because somebody else is hurt. Inflicting pain seems to be the chief sport of persons whose tastes and interests run to ordinary events and direct pleasures and rewards of life—the animalistic or (if one may use a term so polluted with homoletick associations) worldly people of our absurd civilisation. ……. I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of anybody. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person—sorry because it gives the herd so much pleasure. … The natural hatefulness and loathsomeness of the human beast may be overcome only in a few specimens of fine heredity and breeding, by a transference of interests to abstract spheres and a consequent sublimation of the universal sadistic fury. All that is good in man is artificial; and even that good is very slight and unstable, since nine out of ten non-primitive people proceed at once to capitalise their asceticism and vent their sadism by a Victorian brutality and scorn towards all those who do not emulate their pose. Puritans are probably more contemptible than primitive beasts, though neither class deserves much respect.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (8 March 1923), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 211-212
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love , Life , Men , Pain

“Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Men , Fate , Heart

“In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

quoted in George D. Herron, Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), pp. 111-112.

Death , God , Thinking , Suffering

“If the United States and the United Nations truly want peace and security let them fulfill the hopes of the common people everywhere – let them work together to accomplish on a worldwide scale, precisely the kind of democratic association of free people which characterizes the Soviet Union today.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

Daily Worker (15 November 1945)

People , Peace , Hope

“For ourselves, who are ordinary men and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible; turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.”

Virginia Woolf The Common Reader

"Montaigne" http://teaching.quotidiana.org/essays/Woolf_Montaigne.html
The Common Reader (1925)

Life , Women , Men , Youth

“All human activity takes place within a culture and interacts with culture. For an adequate formation of a culture, the involvement of the whole man is required, whereby he exercises his creativity, intelligence, and knowledge of the world and of people. Furthermore, he displays his capacity for self-control, personal sacrifice, solidarity and readiness to promote the common good.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Centesimus Annus, 1 May 1991
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html

People , World , Exercises , Intelligence

“Of course, recognising our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

People , Failure , Understanding , Hurt

“No science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations… Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture as we seen is a group of people defined by acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication between them.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 2 cited in: John B. Davis (2011) Kenneth Boulding as a Moral Scientist http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=econ_workingpapers Working paper

People , Communication , Learning , Science

“Because I want this chamber, I want this city to reflect the truth -- that for all our blind spots and shortcomings, we are a people with the strength and generosity of spirit to bridge divides, to unite in common effort, to help our neighbors, whether down the street or on the other side of the world. I want our actions to tell every child in every neighborhood, your life matters, and we are committed to improving your life chances as committed as we are to working on behalf of our own kids. I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we’re a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen -- man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino, Asian, immigrant, Native American, gay, straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability. Everybody matters. I want them to grow up in a country that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are the United States of America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

Life , People , Truth , World

“This hunger for novelty — which makes sensuous love equally changeful and rapacious, which makes us seek the same emotion in other bodies which we cast off as fast as they fall — turns life into an infernal succession of disenchantments, spites and scorn; and it is chiefly that hunger for novelty which leaves us a prey to unrealizable hope and irrevocable regret. Those lovers who persist in remaining together execute themselves; the name of their common death, which at first was Absence, becomes Presence.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love , Life , Death , Hunger

“Despite all the divisions and discord within our democracy, I see the grit and determination and common goodness of the American people every single day –- and that makes me more confident than ever about our country’s future.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on ISIL (September 2014)

People , Democracy , Confidence , Future

“Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Nature

“After all, it is a common weakness of young authors to put too much into their papers.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Contributions to Mathematical Statistics, New York: Wiley, 1950, p. 10.308a.
1950s

“I don’t have to explain myself. My frequency is very common and is open to anybody to tune in”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Joslyn Pine in: "Book of African-American Quotations"

“It was only in the nineteenth century that Western Indologists and Christian missionaries separated the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs from the Hindus who, in their turn, were defined as only those subscribing to Brahmanical sects…. Nowhere in the voluminous Muslim chronicles do we find the natives of this country known by a name other than Hindu. There were some Jews, and Christians, and Zoroastrians settled here and there… The chronicles distinguish these communities from the Muslims on the one hand, and from the natives of this country on the other. It is only when they come to the natives that no more distinctions are noticed; all natives are identified as ahl-i-Hunûd-Hindu!… In all their narratives, all natives are attacked as Hindus, massacred as Hindus, plundered as Hindus, converted forcibly as Hindus, captured and sold in slave markets as Hindus, and subjected to all sorts of malice and molestation as Hindus. The Muslims never came to know, nor cared to know, as to which temple housed what idol. For them all temples were Hindu but-khãnas, to be desecrated or destroyed as such. They never bothered to distinguish the idol of one God or Goddess from that of another. All idols were broken or burnt by them as so many buts, or deposited in the royal treasury if made of precious metals, or strewn at the door-steps of the mosques if fashion from inferior stuff. In like manner, all priests and monks, no matter to what school or order they belonged, were for the Muslims so many “wicked Brahmans” to be slaughtered or molested as such. In short, the word “Hindu” acquired a religious connotation for the first time within the frontiers of this country. The credit for this turn-out goes to the Muslim conquerors. With the coming of Islam to this country all schools and sects of Sanãtana Dharma acquired a common denominator - Hindu!… Once again, it goes to the credit of the Muslim conquerors that the word “Hindu” acquired a national connotation within the borders of this country.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

God , School , Communication , Fashion

“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief — resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (1 July 1850), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, Vol. 2 (1894)
1850s

People , Law , Confidence , Universe

“As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Plutarch Solon, ch. 27; translation by Bernadotte Perrin. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plut.+Sol.+27.1

Life , Wisdom , People , Change

“Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Memoirs of Napoleon (1829-1831)

“Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?
Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Housing

“As we begin to plan for a new human society, we need to foster common values about clean air, water, and other elements of self-sustenance. These, along with a complete inventory of Earth's resources, will form the basis for a holistic approach to cybernated decision-making.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 54.

Decision , Water

“You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever.
Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Leaflet issued while Russell was in Brixton Prison, 1961
1960s

Love , Life , Wisdom , Men

“b>England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia… When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch… and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

“The Future Results of British Rule in India,” New York Daily Tribune, 08 August 1853

People , Drink

“Socrates: Shall we set down astronomy among the objects of study? Glaucon: I think so, to know something about the seasons, the months and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and for navigation. Socrates: It amuses me to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse you of recommending useless studies.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Socrates as quoted by Plato. In Richard Garnett, Léon Vallée, Alois Brandl (eds.), The Universal Anthology: A Collection of the Best Literature (1899), Vol. 4, 111.
Attributed

People , Thinking , Study , Season

“It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

On dit quelquefois, le sens commun est fort rare...
Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Voltaire_-_Dictionnaire_philosophique_portatif,_6e_%C3%A9dition,_tome_2.djvu/209 (1767).
Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73:
Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/juvenal/8.shtml.
Published translation in French (1731): Il est fort rare qu'on conserve le Sens commun dans une si haute fortune. https://books.google.com/books?id=lFBkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=%22Le+sens+commun%22+%22fort+rare%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjepqeYtNfLAhUS3mMKHb30BdkQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22il%20est%20fort%20rare%22&f=false
English translation: For rarely are civic sympathies [alternative translation: common sense] to be found in that rank".
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Sense

“The first economic revolution was not a revolution because it shifted man's major economic activity from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture. It was a revolution because the transition created an incentive change for mankind of fundamental proportions. The incentive change stems from the different property rights under the two systems. When common property rights over resources exist, there is little incentive for the acquisition of superior technology and learning. In contrast, exclusive property rights which reward the owners provide a direct incentive to improve efficiency and productivity, or, in more fundamental terms, to acquire more knowledge and new techniques. It is this change in incentive that explains the rapid progress made by mankind in the last 10,000 years in contrast to his slow development during the long era as a primitive hunter/gatherer.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 240-1, as cited in: Thrainn Eggertsson (1990), Economic behavior and institutions. p. 255-6

Knowledge , Learning , Change

“Philosophy … should not imagine that specialized work in epistemological theory, or whatever else prides itself on being research, is actually philosophy. Yet a philosophy forswearing all of that must in the end be irreconcilably at odds with the dominant consciousness. Nothing else raises it above the suspicion of apologetics. Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 6

Imagination , History

“We must calm the mind of the common man, and tell him to abstain from the words and even the passions which lead to insurrection.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: A Sincere Admonition to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion (1522), p. 62

Passion

“Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 8
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Age , Law , Art , Science

“Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 319.

People , Books , School , Understanding

“The soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the Common Sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. Rather is it entirely in one part. Because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul — for the reason given above — may perceive it in the surface of the eye.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Soul , Sense , Parting

“Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? […] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"A New Crime" (1870)

Law , Confidence

“Americans are already deep in a culture war over morality—marijuana, abortion, same-sex marriage. We are already racially polarized over affirmative action and income inequality. And when we have ceased to be an English-speaking, Christian country and become instead an Asian-Hispanic-African-American-white nation, with large Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist minorities, and no defined borders, or common faith and culture, what holds us together?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"The Brazil of North America" https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-brazil-of-north-america/ (July 18, 2014), Chronicles
2010s

Marriage , War , Faith , Sex

“It is knowledge that influences and equalises the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

"The Value of Literature to Men of Business," speech at the Manchester Athenaeum (23 October 1844), cited in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 2 (1882), p. 625.
1840s

Knowledge , Universe , Passion

“Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), ch. XII : Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
Misattributed
Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds_(season_1) Criminal Minds] ("L.D.S.K." - season 1, episode 6).

“I think [that] '[t]he judicial Power of the United States' conferred upon this Court 'and such inferior courts as Congress may establish', must be deemed to be the judicial power as understood by our common-law tradition. That is the power 'to say what the law is', Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803), not the power to change it.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

James M. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529 http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/89-680.ZC3.html (1991) (concurring).
1990s

Law , Thinking , Change

“For what would I be otherwise but sport,
In love with one who does not care for me?
I will hide pain in smiles, sooner than be
The common talk. It is a bitter art
To sing a happy song with a sad heart.”

Christine de Pizan De triste cuer chanter joyeusement

Car en mon cuer porte couvertement
Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire,
Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire,
Rire en plorant et très amerement
De triste cuer chanter joyeusement.
Rondeau "De triste cuer chanter joyeusement", line 8; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 154, as translated by http://www.brindin.com/pfpistri.htm by Sheenagh Pugh.

Love , Pain , Sadness , Smile

“During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis that the Jews of different countries would be assimilated and that the Jewish question would thus disappear, as it were, automatically. The historical development of the last quarter of a century has not confirmed this view. Decaying capitalism has everywhere swung over to an intensified nationalism, one aspect of which is anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has loomed largest in the most highly developed capitalist country of Europe, Germany. […]
The Jews of different countries have created their press and developed the Yiddish language as an instrument adapted to modern culture. One must therefore reckon with the fact that the Jewish nation will maintain itself for an entire epoch to come. […]
We must bear in mind that the Jewish people will exist a long time. The nation cannot normally exist without common territory. Zionism springs from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism. […]
Socialism will open the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed technique and culture. It goes without saying that what is here involved is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities, but displacements freely consented to, or rather demanded, by certain nationalities or parts of nationalities. The dispersed Jews who would want to be reassembled in the same community will find a sufficiently extensive and rich spot under the sun. The same possibility will be opened for the Arabs, as for all other scattered nations. National topography will become a part of the planned economy. This is the great historic perspective as I see it. To work for international Socialism means to work also for the solution of the Jewish question.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Excerpts of Trotsky’s interview with Jewish Telegraphic Agency (18 January 1937); as quoted in Trotsky and the Jews (1972) by Joseph Nedava, p. 204

People , Youth , Spring , Communication

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 6

People , World , Family , Beauty

“The good fighter does "what has to be done" and does not let himself be troubled by any scepticism. […] Given the ineptitude of the existing political groups, which, as is well known, have often forced qualified elements to move away from them, and given that what would have been desirable did not occur, which is to say, a political party as a mere force of manoeuvre in the present time, but absolutely disciplined and controlled by a superordinated group, owner of a precise inner doctrine not to be paraded in the common political struggle—given these things, the only possibilities seem to me to be those of more diffuse activity : to win, and influence with direct contacts, personalities, if possible, holding a post of command, not so much in the world of the political schemers as in that of the army, of officialdom and of business.”

Julius Evola (1898–1974) Italian philosopher and esotericist

Interview with Julius Evola, in Ordine Nuovo (1964) https://web.archive.org/web/20140405141542/http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id20.html

World , Business , Time , Personality

“The danger at such a moment is that designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments and may apply them for the furtherance of their sinister ends. I do not think there is any language which can denounce too strongly conduct of this description. He who at such a moment would avail himself of such a commanding sentiment in order to obtain his own individual ends, suggesting a course which he may know to be injurious to the interests of the country, and not favourable to the welfare of mankind, is a man whose conduct no language can too strongly condemn. He outrages the principle of patriotism, which is the soul of free communities. He does more—he influences in the most injurious manner the common welfare of humanity. Such conduct, if it be pursued by any man at this moment, ought to be indignantly reprobated by the people of England; for, in the general havoc and ruin which it may bring about, it may, I think, be fairly described as worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities which now occupy attention.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech to the annual meeting of the Royal and Central Bucks Agricultural Association in Aylesbury (20 September 1876), quoted in 'Lord Beaconsfield At Aylesbury', The Times (21 September 1876), p. 6.

People , Soul , Communication , Thinking

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Quotes about common
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