There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.
We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion - 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes.
We've come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there's no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face.
We all have the potential to show others love and affection, but as we progress in our materialistic world, these values tend to remain dormant. We can develop them on the basis of common sense, common experience and scientific findings. The response to the recent tragedy in the Philippines is an example of how such values are awakened; people helped simply because others are suffering and in need of support.
Common sense invents and constructs no less than its own field than science does in its domain. It is, however, in the nature of common sense not to be aware of this situation.
It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.
The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.