Stanley RosenThinkers

Common sense is by no means irrelevant in complex situations... rather, it is in complex situations that common sense, or at least prudence, seems to be most desirable.

Common sense is eminently practical... it does not strive for a precision which is alien to its domain.

Common sense is not honored but betrayed and turned into non-sense when we assign it a task which it can not fulfill.

Common sense is strictly limited to a practical domain. It can tell us that we cannot breathe in water or live in fire, but it cannot tell us that the whole world is made of water or fire.

Common sense is woefully limited, as suggested by the ambiguity created any time one attempts to put flesh on the bare bones of a definition.

Common sense may tell us that we exist, but it does not supply us with a philosophical or scientific interpretation of the fact that we exist. At the most, we might say that it supplies us with a common sense interpretation of that fact.

Common sense one tends to feel does not need support, but rather gives it.

Common sense is concerned with concrete experience in all its varieties.

Common sense is the ability to reduce a complex situation to its simplest components.

Common sense is not simple-mindedness. On the contrary, simple-mindedness is a lack of common sense.

Prudence is a specialized form or development of common sense, a species rather than the genus as a whole.

Prudence is the ability to assess human conduct, to regulate oneself in accord with this assessment, and to persuade others to follow suit.

Prudence is very close to, if not identical with, political wisdom or statesmanship.