Benjamin Franklin

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Topic: Common Sense, Learning
Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin

More Quotes from Benjamin Franklin

Judgment

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. — Benjamin Franklin

Decision Learning Work

When you're finished changing, you're finished. — Benjamin Franklin

Change

Half a truth is often a great lie. — Benjamin Franklin

Honesty Truth

We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. — Benjamin Franklin

Commitment Cooperation Team

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."

› Benjamin Franklin

Freedom Liberty Society

Action Time

Plough deep while others sleep. — Benjamin Franklin

Work

Drink does not drown care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.

› Benjamin Franklin

Thinking

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We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. — George Orwell

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Good sense is a thing all need, few have, and none think they want. — Benjamin Franklin

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Common sense is the very antipodes of science.

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Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach. — Arnold Glasow

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Trust in God but lock your doors. — Russian Proverb

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Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

› Buddha

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Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. — Gertrude Stein

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Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius. — Ann Wang

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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. — William James

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For the benefit of the flowers, we water the thorns, too. — Egyptian Proverb

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Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

› Oliver Wendell Holmes

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People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.

› Dr. Ben Carson

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Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Look at the stars and not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

› Stephen Hawking

Common Sense

Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do. — Mark Twain

Common Sense Communication

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

› Henry David Thoreau

Common Sense

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

› Ecclesiasticus 31:1

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A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view. — Henry David Thoreau

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Never spend your money before you have earned it. — Thomas Jefferson

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Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

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Acknowledge that you learn just as much, if not more, from your failures as you do from your successes. — Jeffrey Benjamin

Failure Learning Success

There is nothing we can do that will bring us more in the way of rewards than the daily striving to become better adjusted, happier, more productive human beings. It’s a lifetime job and worth every minute we spend on it.

› Earl Nightingale

Learning

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. — Abraham Lincoln

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I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

› Thomas Jefferson

Learning Power Wisdom

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

› Mark Twain

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If you want a new idea, read an old book.

› Ivan Pavlov

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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

› Samuel Smiles

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