Sensible Quotes - page 19
We both are, and know that we are, and delight in our being, and our knowledge of it. Moreover, in these three things no true-seeming illusion disturbs us; for we do not come into contact with these by some bodily sense, as we perceive the things outside of us of all which sensible objects it is the images resembling them, but not themselves which we perceive in the mind and hold in the memory, and which excite us to desire the objects. But, without any delusive representation of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this.
Augustine of Hippo
His problems are far more complex, encompassing economic security, education, freedom from discrimination, decent housing and access to culture. Yet if family planning is sensible it can facilitate or at least not be an obstacle to the solution of the many profound problems that plague him.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy... To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caïque, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.
Benjamin Disraeli
If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
C. S. Lewis
Probability is a kind of penance, which God made, suitable, I presume to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in here wherein, to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might, by every day's experience, be made sensible of our short-sightedness, and liableness to error.
John Locke
A passion is a contranatural movement of the soul or an irrational love, or an blindfold hatred toward any material thing, or because of it: for example, for food, or for women, or for riches, or for worldly glory, or any other sensible thing; or for the sake of such things, as in a senseless hatred for someone on account of the things mentioned above.
Maximus the Confessor
Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.
Buckminster Fuller
The possibility of associating two or three hundred families in agricultural and manufacturing industry depends upon a system so entirely different from what now exists, that it will open to the reader a new social world. He must consequently, in the study which opens before him, follow the guide with confidence, bearing constantly in min the gigantic results which will flow from association. Such results are well worth the sacrifice of a few prejudices. Every sensible reader will be of this opinion, and will concur to follow the advice which I shall constantly give, namely, to neglect the form and style of presentation, and occupy himself solely with the substance of the theory, seeking to determine whether the process of association is really discovered or not.
Charles Fourier
The news from Germany is the very best news that we have had since the war. Ever since 1918 we, like all the other powers, have been behaving just as badly as we possibly could. Well now, when Germany fell, they want and they sat on Germany's head and they kept sitting on Germany's head, although it was quite preposterous, quite evident to any sensible persona, that they couldn't go on like that forever. Then there came a very intelligent gentleman named Adolf Hitler and he, knowing perfectly well that the powers would not fight, he snapped his fingers at the Treaty of Versailles. Just exactly as if we in England had been in the same position. As if the powers had beaten us and sat on our head.
George Bernard Shaw
We, therefore, having directed our inquiry toward a cause that is manifest, sensible, and comprehended by all men, do know that the earth rotates on its own poles, proved by many magnetical demonstrations to exist. For not in virtue only of its stability and its fixed permanent position does the earth posses poles and verticity; it might have had another direction, as eastward or westward, or toward any other quarter. By the wonderful wisdom of the Creator, therefore, forces were implanted in the earth, forces primarily animate, to the end the globe might, with steadfastness, take direction, and that the poles might be opposite, so that on them, as at the extremities of an axis, the movement of diurnal rotation might be performed.
William Gilbert (astronomer)
War is not the greatest evil, though it is an evil. The open struggle of the battlefield is not the greatest evil; worse is that chronic condition of society which makes possible the violence of the stronger to the weaker; worse than war are insincerity and falsehood; worse is that egotism hidden under the mask of humanity and nobility in mind; worse is cowardice passing itself off as fortitude; worse is sophistry deceiving the sensible and wise. Death is not worse than a dishonourable life which destroys its own soul as well as that of its neighbour.
Mike Jones
It seems to me," said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully, "that our best plan is to wheedle his Majesty into giving up his slaves, since he is too great a magician to oppose."
"This is the most sensible thing any of you have suggested," declared the Nome King. "It is folly to threaten me, but I'm so kind-hearted that I cannot stand coaxing or wheedling. If you really wish to accomplish anything by your journey, my dear Ozma, you must coax me.
L. Frank Baum
Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read.
Frederick Douglass
Depend upon it, firmness at the right moment is the real secret of a policy of peace. (Cheers.) There is little reason to doubt that if we had Ministers of the old English type all these terrible things would not have occurred. ... I...appeal to the names...of Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston, and you will be readily sensible of the policy which they...in difficulties not unlike this, pursued, because it recognised the danger at the right time; because there was no fear of employing force when force was necessary, and therefore they escaped the terrible disasters upon which the country now seems to be rushing.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The experimental universal is acquired by us, whose mind's eye is not purely spiritual, only through the help of the senses. For when the senses several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the connection between them... And from this perception repeated again and again and stored in memory, and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up, the functioning of the reasoning begins. The functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the reason to experiment... But when he has administered many times with the sure exclusion of all other things [that could be mistaken for the cause]... then there is formed in the reason this universal... and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a universal experimental principle.
Robert Grosseteste
I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of those men's wits, that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments offered such violence to their own senses, as that they have been able to prefer that which their reason dictated to them, to that which sensible experiments represented most manifestly to the contrary. ...I cannot find any bounds for my admiration, how that reason was able in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape on their senses, as in despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.
Galileo Galilei
...the basic fact of Tony Blair's election does make it, in my view, the most exciting Labour choice since the election of Hugh Gaitskell in December 1955. ... The most fundamental presentation issue for the Labour Party is one of openness or inwardness. Nothing does the party more harm than when it turns in on itself in a mood of proletarian sullenness. Tony Blair epitomises the reverse of this. ... I hope he will use this opportunity in favour of sticking to a constructive line on Europe, in favour of sensible constitutional innovation...and in favour of friendly relations with the Liberal Democrats. ... I hope Mr Blair will not lead the Labour Party further in a free-market direction. Good work has been done in freeing it from nationalisation and other policies. But the market cannot solve everything and it would be a pity to embrace the stale dogmas of Thatcherism just when their limitations are becoming obvious.
Roy Jenkins
No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system's destructive path, we can't deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming. In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It's past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet.
David Suzuki
Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy. (I say "we,” but if you're a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm's length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.)
John Brunner
