The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

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.

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

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

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?

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

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

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

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.

The past is memory. The future is imagination. All that exists is now.

There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.

The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even dearth is one of the things that Nature wills.

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Life does not consist of facts. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.