quotations about opinion
Let us resist the opinion of the world fearlessly, provided only that our self-respect grows in proportion to our indifference.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Correct opinions, well established on any subject, are the best preservative against the seductions of error.
BISHOP MANT
attributed, Holy Thoughts on Holy Things
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
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
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'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
Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
SHERI S. TEPPER
The Visitor
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
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
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
It is always chilling in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
If you convinced me
And I convinced you,
Would there not still be
Two points of view?
RICHARD ARMOUR
"Argument"
The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Notebooks
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
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
If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
The strength of false opinion is of such force that it overthroweth the love betwixt man and wife, betwixt father and child, betwixt friend and friend, and betwixt master and servant.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opinions, like weapons, are often made for defense as well as offense.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims