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Common Quotes

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Common Quotes

“Sincere thought, real free thought, ready, in the name of superhuman authority or of humble common sense, to question the basis of what is officially taught and generally accepted, is less and less likely to thrive. It is, we repeat, by far easier to enslave a literate people than an illiterate one, strange as this may seem at first sight. And the enslavement is more likely to be lasting.”

PeopleFirstsMayRealSeemsNamesCommonTaughtStrangeReadyEasierAuthoritySightBasesHumbleAcceptedCommon SenseRepeatsThriveLastingSincereIlliterateEnslavementSuperhumanFree Thought
Book:The Lightning and the Sun
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“It seems that the ancient Medicine Men understood that listening to another's story somehow gives us the strength of example to carry on, as well as showing us aspects of ourselves we can't easily see. For listening to the stories of others - not to their precautions or personal commandments - is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.”

IfsMenGivingWellsKindEnoughStoriesSeemsRememberNamesWaterCommonBreakExampleListeningUnderstoodAspectMedicineAncientIsolationCommandmentsFeverPrecaution
Author:Mark Nepo
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“With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.”

ShouldMindNamesCommonSunInfluenceParticularAuthorityIntellectualDeserveWeightErrorsSuperiorsRememberedHorizonPosterityBeam
Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“The Adlerians, in the name of "individual psychology," take the side of society against the individual. ... Adler's later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. "Our science ... is based on common sense." Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.”

WorldNamesIndividualSidesCommonHalfPsychologyWorstHonestPracticalsCommon SenseFrankConventionalHonoredDeceitfulHonest TruthHalf TruthAdler
Author:Alfred Adler
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“What had really caused the women's movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women's life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn't live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was "the problem that had no name." Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”

YearsFirstsHumansProblemTurnsNamesTermRealizingCommonStepsOur LivesCenturyMovementSixFaultsMotherhoodHuman LifeFortyFirst StepsEightyExpectancyLife Expectancy
Author:Betty Friedan
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“Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.”

MenDifferentReasonActionEvilNamesCommonTasteJudgmentSightHearingSmellSensesDoctrinePleasantGood And EvilCustomsAppetiteOne TimeTemperDiverseDisagreeableAversionAnother TimeCommon Life
Author:Thomas Hobbes
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“Now I wonder what our knowledge has in common with God's knowledge according to those who treat God's knowledge... Is there anything else common to both besides the mere name? ...there is an essential distinction between His knowledge and ours, like the distinction between the substance of the heavens and that of the earth.”

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Book:The Guide for the Perplexed
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“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name - modern slavery.”

HumansPersonsHumanityNamesNationsSocialCommunityCommonTalkingViolenceModernCrimeTearsOughtConcernSlaveryInjusticeOrganizedFuelFabricOutragePublic HealthHuman TraffickingTraffickingOrganized CrimeCommon HumanityModern Slavery
Author:Barack Obama
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“There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done 'for the common good.'...one might point to the way in which racial hatreds and even persecution are admitted by people who consider themselves, and perhaps in some sense are, kind, tolerant, civilized and even humane.”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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“I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.”

PeopleFirstsDifferentKidsAbleLastsNamesParentCommonGrowing UpGrowingGenerationsAfrican AmericanNigeria
Author:Terry Gross
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“For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.”

LongDifferentHelpingNamesNationsCommunityMy OwnCommonMiddleApproachDemocraticStriveIncludingEastOppressionPeacefulStabilityMiddle EastReformersDifferent Approach
Author:George W. Bush
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“... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.”

CharacterLawNamesChristCommonHeardAtheismPositive AtheismPaganAnglo SaxonCommon Law
Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state
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“The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism.”

GivingTryingWellsMayDoeNamesCommonLandIndependenceRussiaFormerBordersUsaLockedProvokingImperialismInsultingGeorgiaProvincesKosovoYugoslavia
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?”

NamesCommonCommon Sense
Book:Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography
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“But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.”

MenBelieveReasonPhilosophyTurnsNamesBeliefLanguageUnderstandingLinesCommonGreaterCuttingFashionDrawsObviousComplainingSuitsObservationDistinctionIdolsTwistsAlliancesDiligentTroublesome
Author:Francis Bacon
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“Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.”

MenWorldWayLifeSpiritNamesGivenCommonGloryDevotionGods WillSoleDevotedServing GodPietyCommon Life
Book:A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
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“To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils and to assert the independence of my country- these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter - these were my means.”

PeopleMeanCountryWholeGovernmentPastPoliticalEvilNamesMemoriesCommonBreakFailingSourceRepublicanConnectionsEnglandCatholicIndependenceTyrannyObjectivesSubstitutesIrelandProtestantsAbolishDenominationsIrishmenDissension
Book:Freedom the Wolfe Tone way
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“Perhaps in our presence, the most heroic deed on earth is done in some silent spirit, the loftiest purpose cherished, the most generous sacrifice made, and we do not suspect it. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.”

BelieveMadeDoneEarthSpiritPurposeNamesI BelieveCommonHeardSacrificeGreatnessSilentDeedsGenerousSuspectsHeroicMultitudesHeroic Deeds
Book:Self-culture: An address introductory to the Franklin lectures, delivered at Boston, September, 1838
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