quotations about opinion
Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.
HORACE SMITH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Let all differences of opinion touching errors, or supposed errors, of the head or heart on the part of any in the past, growing out of these matters, be at once and forever in the deep ocean of oblivion buried.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS
Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private
I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
The joy a person is usually seen to express at the conversion of another to his opinion is seldom more than the impulse of egotistical satisfaction at being considered worthy of didactic imitation.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
MARK TWAIN
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
If I hold my own opinion to be absolute truth, my own judgment to be the only measure of truth, I constitute myself God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don't suppose it very hard.
ISAAC ASIMOV
"Seven Steps to Grand Master"
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Leo Baeck, 1953
We want at least a modicum of intellectual honesty, and the man who shuffles his opinions in order to match ours is seen through quickly. We want none of him.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.
ANTON CHEKHOV
The Mill
Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra--the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
Spiritual Scientist
Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Public opinion is no reformer; it has never corrected the errors, the follies, nor the vices of the human family. Public opinion is a conservative aristocrat, retaining its grasp upon the present, and subjecting the free inquirer after truth to obloquy and reproach.
CHARLES EVERETT TOOTHAKER
The Odd-fellow's Offering
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
LEO TOLSTOY
Patriotism and Christianity
If you convinced me
And I convinced you,
Would there not still be
Two points of view?
RICHARD ARMOUR
"Argument"
A great faction is many persons, yet but one party; and that is but one opinion: such a faction is but one man, in point of judgment. One free-spirited man is, in this particular, equal to a whole faction.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Opinions, like weapons, are often made for defense as well as offense.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
It's as simple as this. When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they won't really get on board.
PATRICK LENCIONI
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections