OPINION QUOTES VI

quotations about opinion

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays

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

EPICTETUS

Fragments

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Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Heretics

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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

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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

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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


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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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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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


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


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

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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

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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


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


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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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


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

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

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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

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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

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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