
Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)
A collection of quotes on the topic of commonsense, people, doing, use.
Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)
“The main enemies of science are facts and commonsense.”
In a video posting, announcing his candidacy for President of the United States (16 January 2007) http://www.barackobama.com/video/from_barack_transcript/
2007
1920s, The American Soldier (1920)
Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 19-20
if someone had spoken like this to me, I wouldn’t even have understood his point.
My Women.The New Yorker https://archive.is/20121204150452/www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050613fa_fact 6 June 2005
Articles and Interviews
Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750
Leader of the Opposition
Television: Controlling the Explosive Influence http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/28th-december-1974/14/television, The Spectator archive (28 December, 1974).
I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)
Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2008/12/14/saving-child-witches-a-nigerian-perspective/ (December 14th, 2008)
p 33 as cited in: D. Psillos (2003) Science Education Research in the Knowledge-Based Society. p. 44.
Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975)
Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 432 (1971).
Statement Following Official Swearing-In Ceremony https://www.blunt.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2011/1/u-s-senator-roy-blunt-releases-statement-following-official-swearing-in-ceremony (January 4, 2011)
1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)
Speech to the Labour Party Conference after winning the 1983 leadership election (October 2, 1983), reported in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1983, p. 30.
Preface, Leading Case of Jesus Christ
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: I dislike cruelty, even cruelty to other people, and should therefore like to see all cruel people exterminated. But I should recoil with horror from a proposal to punish them. Let me illustrate my attitude by a very famous, indeed far too famous, example of the popular conception of criminal law as a means of delivering up victims to the normal popular lust for cruelty which has been mortified by the restraint imposed on it by civilization. Take the case of the extermination of Jesus Christ. No doubt there was a strong case for it. Jesus was from the point of view of the High Priest a heretic and an impostor. From the point of view of the merchants he was a rioter and a Communist. From the Roman Imperialist point of view he was a traitor. From the commonsense point of view he was a dangerous madman. From the snobbish point of view, always a very influential one, he was a penniless vagrant. From the police point of view he was an obstructor of thoroughfares, a beggar, an associate of prostitutes, an apologist of sinners, and a disparager of judges; and his daily companions were tramps whom he had seduced into vagabondage from their regular trades. From the point of view of the pious he was a Sabbath breaker, a denier of the efficacy of circumcision and the advocate of a strange rite of baptism, a gluttonous man and a winebibber. He was abhorrent to the medical profession as an unqualified practitioner who healed people by quackery and charged nothing for the treatment. He was not anti-Christ: nobody had heard of such a power of darkness then; but he was startlingly anti-Moses. He was against the priests, against the judiciary, against the military, against the city (he declared that it was impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven), against all the interests, classes, principalities and powers, inviting everybody to abandon all these and follow him. By every argument, legal, political, religious, customary, and polite, he was the most complete enemy of the society of his time ever brought to the bar. He was guilty on every count of the indictment, and on many more that his accusers had not the wit to frame. If he was innocent then the whole world was guilty. To acquit him was to throw over civilization and all its institutions. History has borne out the case against him; for no State has ever constituted itself on his principles or made it possible to live according to his commandments: those States who have taken his name have taken it as an alias to enable them to persecute his followers more plausibly.
It is not surprising that under these circumstances, and in the absence of any defence, the Jerusalem community and the Roman government decided to exterminate Jesus. They had just as much right to do so as to exterminate the two thieves who perished with him.
Source: The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997), Chapter 1, “The Die is Cast” (p. 19)
Here is the sample of liberty no storms may shake. Here are the altars of freedom no factions shall destroy. It was American in conception, American in its building. It shall be American in the fulfillment. Factional once, we are all American now. And we mean to be all Americans to all the world.
1920s, The American Soldier (1920)