OPINION QUOTES VI

quotations about opinion

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

H. W. SHAW

attributed, Day's Collacon


Opinion is more often the cause of discontent than nature.

EPICURUS

attributed, Day's Collacon


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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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


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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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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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


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


The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

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I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.

MARK TWAIN

What Is Man?

Tags: Mark Twain


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

AMY REED

Crazy


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


The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays

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

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characteristics

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Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.

HORACE SMITH

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

JAMES MADISON

Federalist No. 10, November 22, 1787

Tags: James Madison