80 Common Sense Quotes and Words of Wisdom

These common sense quotes and sayings about behavior and knowledge will expand your mind.

Common sense helps us navigate the problems we face in life each and every day.

These sayings about behavior, intuition, and information will give you a more clear understanding of how common sense impacts your life.

What are examples of common sense?

When something in your gut is telling you what to do next, that may be common sense guiding you.

It is important to trust your instincts and listen to your intuition.

These common sense quotes will make you understand the true power of your internal reasoning.

Do you know people who seem to have no common sense at all?

It can be frustrating dealing with someone who doesn’t use or understand common sense wisdom.

Share these common sense quotes with your friends and family to broaden their horizons.

Don’t forget to also check out these motivational practice quotes to boost your skills.

If you enjoy this article, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily motivation. 

If you want more motivational quotes, check out our motivational quotes category page.

Common sense quotes and words of wisdom

1. “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein

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2. “Common sense is not so common.” – Voltaire

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3. “If a man has common sense, he has all the sense there is.” – Sam Rayburn

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4. “Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.” – Rene Descartes

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5. “The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.” – Walter Lippmann

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6. “Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.” – Victor Hugo

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7. “Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.” – Julian Casablancas

8. “It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.” – Robert Green Ingersoll

9. “Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.” – Patrick Lencioni

10. “Philosophy is common sense with big words.” – James Madison

Common sense quotes about using your intuition, resources, and knowledge

11. “I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail. I’m an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after.” – Cat Stevens

12. “Common sense often makes good law.” – William O. Douglas

13. “Let’s not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can’t have high standards without good discipline.” – William Hague

14. “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” – Clive James

15. “I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I think, and out of all that I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.” – Marquis de Lafayette

16. “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

17. “Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.” – William Osler

18. “There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

19. “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.” – Giorgio de Chirico

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20. “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense quotes to inspire you to use your brains to the best of their ability

21. “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.” – H. L. Mencken

22. “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” – Albert Einstein

23. “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” – George Seaton

24. “My biggest skill is common sense. I understand life.” – Jurgen Klopp

25. “Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.” – Josh Billings

26. “We must return optimism to our parenting. To focus on the joys, not the hassles; the love, not the disappointments; the common sense, not the complexities.” – Fred G. Gosman

27. “Why is it that common sense is seldom common practice?” – Eliyahu Goldratt

28. “Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.” – Travis Bradberry

29. “The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.” – William Inge

30. “Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.” – Joyce Meyer

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Common sense quotes to expand your mind

31. “If elephants didn’t exist, you couldn’t invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense.” – Lyall Watson

32. “The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.” – George Berkeley

33. “In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.” – James Reston

34. “If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and ‘with malice toward none and charity for all’ go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.” – Henry A. Wallace

35. “Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common sense.” – Helen Rowland

36. “Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.” – Isabel Allende

37. “Every one of you is a super genius if you just focus your common sense.” – Eliyahu Goldratt

38. “Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

39. “We all run the risk of thinking that people have common sense sometimes.” – Hozier

40. “Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Other common sense quotes and sayings

41. “Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.” – Josh Billings

42. “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” – Vladimir Nabokov

43. “The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.” – Henry Ward Beecher

44. “The failure to invest in youth reflects a lack of compassion and a colossal failure of common sense.” – Coretta Scott King

45. “Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.” – Thomas Huxley

46. “Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.” – An Wang

47. “Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

48. “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.” – Thomas A. Edison

49. “I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don’t have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.” – Jerry Lewis

50. “Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.” – George Santayana

Common sense quotes that are totally true

51. “It is not common sense to assert that those who have achieved success have done so because they are lucky or that they have never failed.” — Catherine Pulsifer

52. “Common sense is perhaps the most equally divided, but surely the most underemployed, talent in the world.” — Christine Collange

53. “I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.” — Thomas Jefferson

54. “I always take the time to eat well and eat locally because it’s common sense.” — Ellen Page

55. Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

56. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” — Thomas Paine

57. “Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.” — Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

58. Common sense is the genius of humanity.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

59. “A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live.” ― Criss Jami

60. “Knowledge counts but common sense matters.” ― LouAnne Johnson

Common Sense Quotes As an Important Aspect in Life

61. “The greatest results in life are usually attained by common sense and perseverance.” — Owen Feltham

62. “Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.” — Ian Mcewan

63. “A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton

64. You can handle just about anything that comes at you out on the road with a believable grin, common sense and whiskey.” — Bill Murray

65. “I’m not a doctor. I just have a tremendous amount of common sense.” — Steve Harvey

66. “I want nevertheless to add that for me the world is a defiance of common sense.” — Rene Magritte

67. “Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is not true.” — Elbert Hubbard

68. “Because desperation breeds gullibility. People want to lose weight so much that their common sense shuts off.” — David L. Katz

69. He uses common sense to judge not the intentions of an action but its consequences.” — Paulo Coelho

70. Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.” — Bertrand Russell

Common Sense Quotes To Help Think Straight

71. “The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” ― Shannon L. Alder

72. “The truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.” ― Thomas H. Huxley

73. “Common sense ain’t common.” ― Will Rogers

74. “Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.” ― Rene Descartes

75. “Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

76. “Common sense is compelled to make its way without the enthusiasm of anyone.” ― Ed Howe

77. “The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.” ― Samuel Butler

78. “Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense; no one thinks he needs more of it than he already had.” ― Descartes

79. “When unsure how to solve a problem, use your common sense.” ― Catherine Pulsifer

80. “Common sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

What are your favorite inspirational quotes and common sense sayings?

Our instincts and intuition provide us with a certain type of wisdom.

Common sense is the natural ability to use logic, knowledge, and reasoning to reach a conclusion.

These common sense quotes will help you better understand the importance of this type of deductive reasoning.

Using common sense will put you on a path to success and will help you reach all of your goals.

Read these common sense sayings anytime you need some motivation to try your hardest and put your mind to work.

Has there ever been a time when common sense helped you out and saved the day?

It’s important to never underestimate the power of common sense, teamwork, and effort.

Share these common sense quotes with everyone in your life to inspire them to use their brains to the best of their ability.

What are your favorite common sense quotes and sayings about using your intuition, resources, and knowledge?

Let us know in the comment section below.