“In the quest for higher education and learning, we must never leave behind... common sense.”

“It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.”

“To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life.”

“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”

“Our education serves three purposes. First, we must learn what others think we must know. Second, we cannot profess anything that is not widely accepted. Third, we must learn to hide our own ignorance and never speak about it in public.”

“Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss common sense.”