Quotes
Quotes about Opinion
Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion"ânot even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.
Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.
One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.
Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, and the skillful direct it.
A fellow can't keep people from having a bad opinion of him, but he can keep them from being right about it.
A man is getting along on the road to wisdom when he begins to realize that his opinion is just an opinion.
The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper and render them more important.
Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, the pursuit must go on.
Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree.
I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this. - The Upton Letters.
I am of the opinion which you have always held, that "viva voce" voting at elections is the best method. [Lat., Nam ego in ista sum sententia, qua te fuisse semper scio, nihil ut feurit in suffragiis voce melius.]
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
If the small minority of enlightened citizens who are able to conceive sound principles of political management do not succeed in winning the support of their fellow citizens and converting them to the endorsement of policies that bring and preserve prosperity, the cause of mankind and civilization is hopeless. There is no other means to safeguard a propitious development of human affairs than to make the masses of inferior people adopt the ideas of the elite. This has to be achieved by convincing them. It cannot be accomplished by a despotic regime that instead of enlightening the masses beats them into submission. In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
When the people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.
...whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting. Democracy is the only method of peaceful change that man has yet been discovered.
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.
The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
My opinion is, that power should always be distrusted, in whatever hands it is placed.
