OPINION QUOTES VI

quotations about opinion

The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

Tags: William Hazlitt


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

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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


Men do not care so much for the opinions they hold, as for what they hold by their opinions.

RALPH VENNING

The New Command Renew'd


Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Opinion is more often the cause of discontent than nature.

EPICURUS

attributed, Day's Collacon


The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

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The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays

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Persecution is only an attempt to do that overtly and with violence, which the community is, in self-defense, perpetually doing unconsciously and in silence. In many societies variation of belief is practically impossible. In other societies it is permitted only along certain definite lines. In no society that has ever existed, or could be conceived as existing, are opinions equally free (in the scientific sense of the term, not the legal) to develop themselves indifferently in all directions.

ARTHUR BALFOUR

Essays and Addresses

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Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.

AMY REED

Crazy


Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

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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

Tags: truth


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


People of good sense are those whose opinions agree with ours.

H. W. SHAW

attributed, Day's Collacon


Opinion! O opinion! How many men of slightest worth hast thou uplifted high in life's proud ranks?

EURIPIDES

attributed, Day's Collacon

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I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don't suppose it very hard.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"Seven Steps to Grand Master"

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

JOHN STUART MILL

Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government

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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

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Look less at an opinion given, than at the character of him who pronounces it. Incalculable mischief is often done by people unreflectingly receiving as "authority" the opinions of a mere ass, on subjects with which they are imperfectly acquainted, but on which he is supposed to be better informed, yet which are often the farthest from the truth, the judgment of such a person being either swayed by the most absurd prejudices, or blinded by the most ineffable conceit.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

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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

Tags: George Eliot