quotations about opinion
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
speech, June 12, 1942
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
Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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
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
For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions by a wager.
LORD BYRON
Beppo
Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.
AMY REED
Crazy
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
It is often very illuminating ... to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?
WALTER LIPPMANN
Public Opinion
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
No man can be convinced when he will not.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
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
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
There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well-supported in logic and argument than others.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
American Atheist Magazine, winter 1998-1999
It is a most toilsome task to run the wild goose chase after a well-breathed opinionist.
NATHANIEL WARD
The Simple Cobbler of Agawam
Opinions derived from long experience are exceedingly valuable.
PETER BARLOW
Second report addressed to the directors and proprietors of the London and Birmingham Railway company, founded on an inspection of, and experiments made on the Liverpool and Manchester railway
You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.
WOODROW WILSON
address to the Associated Press, April 20, 1915
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
JOHN STUART MILL
Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government