1. Common sense is part of the home-made ideology of those…deprived of learning, of those…kept ignorant…common sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits.

John Berger (b.1926) British novelist, essayist, and art critic. A Fortunate Man (1967)

2. Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of.

Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, orator, and letter writer. Letter (September 27, 1748)

3. Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher and mathematician. Le Discours de la method (1637), pt. 1

4. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) U.S. physicist. Quoted in Scientific American (February 1976)

5. Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) U.S. essayist, lecturer, and poet. “Art,” Essays: First Series (1841)

6. Common sense is a very tricky instrument; it is as deceptive as it is indispensable.

Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985) U.S. philosopher. Philosophical Studies (1962)

7. Common-sense knowledge is prompt, categorical, and inexact.

Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985) U.S. philosopher. Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

8. We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us.

Francois La Rochefoucauld (1613-80) French epigrammatist. Reflections: or, Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665)

9. Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

An Wang (1920-90) U.S. entrepreneur, business executive, electrical engineer, and founder of Wang Laboratories. Boston Magazine (December 1986)