OPINION QUOTES VI

quotations about opinion

Change of opinion is increase of knowledge.

URIEL ACOSTA

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

H. W. SHAW

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.

EPICTETUS

Fragments

Tags: Epictetus


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


The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

introduction, Sceptical Essays

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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

Tags: Albert Einstein


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 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


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

EURIPIDES

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Euripides


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

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

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

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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

Tags: Charles Horton Cooley


You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.

MARK TWAIN

"Corn Pone Opinions", Europe and Elsewhere

Tags: Mark Twain


We should never wed an opinion for better or for worse; what we take upon good grounds, we should lay down upon better.

JONATHAN SWIFT

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Jonathan Swift


Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Emerson in His Journals

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


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


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


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


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

Tags: Mark Twain