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As a good gardener prepares the soil, so a wise leader creates an environment that promotes community. ... community involves a common place, a common time, and a common purpose. Just getting people in the same place at the same time does not produce a team. Community requires a common vision.
Diane DreherA wise man once told me- heโs a muslim by the way- that he has more in common with a jew than he does a fanatic of his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or a Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a ration, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion
Gregory David RobertsScience starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].
J. Robert OppenheimerI taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper.
Jack KirbyThe ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions.
Antony HewishI am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
Nicholas SparksWhatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.
Leonid BrezhnevScience is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Perhaps we have more in common by virtue of our common humanity than we have differences by virtue of our religions.
Mark HeardThe charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?
Thomas SowellFor the truth is that men do not desire to be the Common Man any more than they are the Common Man. They need greatness in others and the occasion to discover the greatness in themselves.
C. V. WedgwoodThe skin is a variety of contingency: in it, through it, with it, the world and my body touch each other, the feeling and the felt, it defines their common edge. Contingency means common tangency: in it the world and the body intersect and caress each other. I do not wish to call the place in which I live a medium, I prefer to say that things mingle with each other and that I am no exception to that. I mix with the world which mixes with me. Skin intervenes between several things in the world and makes them mingle.
Michel SerresDictators long ago found out it is easier to unite people in common hatred than common love.
Dagobert D. RunesI hope and believe my co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters... they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy.
Harriet MartineauHere comes Jesse Jackson, he talks of common ground. Does that common ground include me, or is it just a sound?
Lou ReedThe 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. WhiteThe legislatures will have better means of information. They can discover the danger at a distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power, and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the community. They can readily communicate with each other in the different States, and unite their common forces for the protection of their common liberty.
Alexander HamiltonTo have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, โ such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.
Ernest Renanwhoever gives the common people food to eat is a good person whoever lets the common people starve is a bad person.
Hualing Nieh EngleThe tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.It is the taking by the community for the use of the community of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.
Henry GeorgeIn republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this . . . is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit.
James MadisonWhen you voice your disagreement, begin by talking about what you have in common with the person you are arguing with. Too often we rush to judgment, race to argue, and overlook all the common ground we share.
Matthew KellyWe need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy.
Carl SaganWhat a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?
Steven PinkerCommon sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.
George Jean NathanOur society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life. ... Most, if not all of you, have very deep ties with the land and with the people of Israel, as I do; for my Christian faith sprang from yours. The Bible stories are woven into my childhood memories as the gallant struggle of modem Jews to be free of persecution is also woven into our souls.
Lyndon B. JohnsonThe only thing you will get from common sense, is a common life. Be uncommon and have uncommon sense.
Bryant H. McGillI think the most effective forms of critique are ones that establish a common ground for people to occupy, and then appeal to the best nature of people on that common ground.
Mohsin HamidThe ability of the gospel to unite us on common strengths and common truths is one of the great miracles . . . of the gospel.
Jeffrey R. HollandWe judge the Russians because they're living under despotism and we don't like it, but we've gotten into a fix now where we're living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament.
Reinhold NiebuhrTo refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.
James MadisonMarie clasped her hands together and looked vulnerable. Payne flinched. โThe only time you donโt tell me something is when you think itโs dangerous, because being a fragile, sheltered noblewoman, I might faint at the thought of experiencing physical harm like a common person.โ She sighed, and seemingly from nowhere, produced an enormous cast-iron frying pan easily one hundred centimeters in diameter. โAnd then,โ she said sadly, โI have to damage one of the good pans by smacking it against your thick, common skull until you tell meโ
Phil FoglioThe most common misunderstanding of disruptive innovations is to overestimate their impact in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Another common misunderstanding is to associate disruptive with good.
Geoffrey MoorePeople concentrate, particularly for their own purposes, on dividing people, and it's just not necessary. If you actually spend time with somebody, in 10 minutes, you'll find something in common, and it's powerful when you do. When you find you've got something in common with somebody, all of a sudden, you're friends.
Paul BlackthorneThe truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.
Arthur PhillipsFor Star Trek proves, as faulty as individual episodes could be, is that the much-maligned common man and common woman has an enormous hunger for brotherhood. They are ready for the twenty-third century now, and they are light-years ahead of their petty governments and their visionless leaders.
Gene RoddenberryA society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
Emile DurkheimThat tendency of social thought to generalize, to describe a leading tendency in a society in such a way that it seems that everything falls within its iron laws, is very common. Of course our own experience tells us that life is not as monochrome as these thinkers depict it. On the other hand they are very valuable because they alert us to transformations we are likely to take for granted.
Susan SontagFor god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love.
Carter HeywardThe whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an "elite" class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.
Bill WattersonI joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilization, and I would not have her (Britain) say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.
Francis LedwidgeIt would seem that not only is religion lacking in the schools - so is common sense. I wonder what a teacher is supposed to say if a kid asks about those four words on a dime - 'In God We Trust.' Or maybe that's why they aren't being taught how to read these days.
Ronald Reagan[P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.
E. O. WilsonEmpty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.
LaoziShe might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.
Jerry Spinelli