A Quote by Voltaire

Common sense is both more rare and more desirable in leaders than mere intelligence.

Voltaire

Quote Topics

Both Common Common Sense Desirable Intelligence Leaders Mere More Rare Sense Than

Quote Author

Voltaire
French - Writer
November 21, 1694 - May 30, 1778

What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.

Henry David Thoreau

The truth is Floridians and Montanans have more in common than you might think. Both are fed up with partisan gridlock in D.C., and look to their state leaders to find common ground, pursue compromise, and move forward solutions that improve the health of their economy, their communities and their residents.

Steve Bullock

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

David Deutsch

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...

David Deutsch

Also, that which is desirable in itself is more desirable than what is desirable per accidens.

Aristotle

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

Catharine Beecher

We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.

William Hazlitt

The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it's something that theatre can do, but it's rare; it's very rare.

John Berger

Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.

Michael Crichton

Victims recite problems. Leaders develop solutions. That might seem like common sense, but common sense is rarely common practice.

Robin S. Sharma

The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.

E. B. White

He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It is rare to find a man who believes in his own thoughts or speaks that which he is created to say. As nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing, so nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own...feel yourself, and be not daunted by things...The light by which we see this world comes out from the soul of the observer.