quotations about opinion
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
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
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
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
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
I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.
HELEN KELLER
The Story of My Life
I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don't suppose it very hard.
ISAAC ASIMOV
"Seven Steps to Grand Master"
Men of wealth, especially self-made men, have as much pride about their opinions as the haughtiest aristocrat has about his pedigree.
JULIET CAMPBELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.
HORACE SMITH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.
AMY REED
Crazy
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
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
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
If you convinced me
And I convinced you,
Would there not still be
Two points of view?
RICHARD ARMOUR
"Argument"
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
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
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
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
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
Opinions, like weapons, are often made for defense as well as offense.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims