quotations about opinion
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
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
Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.
AMY REED
Crazy
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
Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
SHERI S. TEPPER
The Visitor
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
It is always chilling in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
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
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
If you convinced me
And I convinced you,
Would there not still be
Two points of view?
RICHARD ARMOUR
"Argument"
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
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
Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.
HORACE SMITH
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
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
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Sentiment of Rationality
Remember that all is opinion.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don't suppose it very hard.
ISAAC ASIMOV
"Seven Steps to Grand Master"