quotations about opinion
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
A man should change his opinion as often as he finds it wrong.
ROBERT CARY
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub.
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.
AMY REED
Crazy
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
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
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
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Remember that all is opinion.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Opinion, that great fool, makes fools of all,
And once I feared her, till I met a mind,
Whose grave instructions philosophical
Toss'd it like dust upon a March strong wind.
NATHANIEL FIELD
"To My Loved Friend, Master John Fletcher, On His Pastoral"
Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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
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
Opinion! O opinion! How many men of slightest worth hast thou uplifted high in life's proud ranks?
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
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
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
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
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