Quotes About Opinion

It just seems like right now we’re in a place where people are being witch-hunted for expressing an opinion. Even if it’s a lousy opinion or a shitty opinion, and comics I don’t think can ever fall into the trap of any groups that want to censor what a person says or thinks or punish a person for expressing what they think. Anything you say about a social issue is going to offend half the country. I don’t care how nicely you say it, I don’t care how well you construct the joke, simply by stating the opinion, you are for something and anti something else.

I have looked at public opinion polls in France in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the height of Marshall Plan aid. They had a very negative attitude towards the United States then. There were negative attitudes towards the United States because of Vietnam. There were negative attitudes about the United States when Reagan wanted to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles. I don't think the president should base his foreign policy on American public opinion polls, let alone foreign public opinion polls.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Who is so wise as to have a perfect knowledge of all things? Therefore trust not too much to thine own opinion, but be ready also to hear the opinion of others. Thought thine own opinion be good, yet if for the love of God thou foregoest it, and followest that of another, thou shalt the more profit thereby.

I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself.

I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington. And if people have an opinion, it's a religious opinion that is heartly felt, obviously they should be allowed to practice that and no government should interfere with them.

I always remind myself that whenever I see a good review or hear a good opinion of a role that I've done that it's just an opinion, and therefore it's technically neither right nor wrong; it can't be. It's not a fact, it's not solid, it's not something you can bet the house on.

The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

Our opinion of others is not so variable as our opinion of ourselves.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

There are by now declassified documents from the 1950s that tells you a lot about what's going on in Egypt and we should have known it then. It's about exactly what's happening, how we can disregard public opinion as long as the dictators we support are capable of suppressing their populations. So to hell with public opinion. That's all right there in the 1950's. That's not security. That's not security of the government. That's, if anything, security from its own population. And there's a lot of that.

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

Whether we're talking about what the role of the government is, what you think of the United Nations, political leaders or how to respond to [Hurricane] Katrina and whether it had anything to do with race, across a wide variety of issues we see differences between mainstream black and white American opinion that dwarfs anything in American public opinion, period. Democrat versus Republican, men versus women, conservative versus liberal, the black/white divide is the biggest, one of the biggest in the world, and certainly the largest gap in the United States.

Given that everyone is giving you their own opinion about him, I think the only opinion you should listen to is yours.

Talk to people who know more than you. I feel like we're in this stupid sea of opinion, like "My opinion is valid because it's mine and I have it."

I also believe that when something negative comes out about you in the media, that's only one person's opinion. These guys sometimes believe they've been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn't the case.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

About 90 percent of what's out there in cyberspace is hearsay - or lies - and opinion, often misinformed opinion, and it's all repeated over and over again.

Everyone has an opinion. That's just a crazy part of this world now. You can type things on the internet. You can have no credentials in any area and just get on your smart phone and write whatever you want. I know where I come from and where I want to go. I know I'm 100% ready. Everyone else seems to have an opinion, and claim to know, whether I am or I'm not. I would love to see all the people who run their mouths try and do what I do. Because they can't.

Actors spend a great deal of their time making films. And that doesn't mean that they're not educated. But we haven't gone to law school and we're not experts on policy. We're just people with a platform and an opinion. But that should never be enough, in my opinion, to be political.

It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached. It is because we do not yet know which of the many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we wait until it has gained sufficient support.

In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

We need prizes as publishers... to focus attention on books, for people to know what to go look for. But often in my opinion and in probably everyone's opinion, the right books don't get chosen. Still we need books to be chosen even if they are not exactly the right ones, otherwise many people won't know what to read. As a publisher, I feel prizes are important for the publishing business. But as a writer, I think, writers shouldn't get too distracted by prizes because very often they don't go to the right person. You shouldn't take it too seriously if you haven't won a prize.

Only value the opinion of those that you respect. And anyone that you don’t respect, pay no mind to their opinion about you or anything else.

One of the surest ways of making a friend and influencing the opinion of another is to give consideration to [his or her] opinion, let [him or her] sustain a feeling of importance.

For the record, someone will ALWAYS say that you are too big, too thin, too lean, too fat, too whatever. In my opinion, they are too conceited to think that their opinion is going to change our behavior. A person with confidence won't be deterred! Keep after it!

I have a low opinion of books; they are but piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention. No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frostbitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books.

If you have kids, in my opinion, your priorities better shift to them.

I think I got a complete picture of what the lives of scientists are like. My father is of the opinion that if scientists are allowed to follow their nose, eventually it results in something. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. What I came out of it with, in a non-cynical way, was that the scientific process is as messy as anything else. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just the way it is.

To have two Legislative Assemblies in the United Kingdom would, in my opinion, be an intolerable mischief; and I think no sensible man can wish for two within the limits of the present United Kingdom who does not wish the United Kingdom to become two or more nations, entirely separate from each other.

In sixth grade, we all had to write this opinion paper. Most wrote about things like why we should be able to chew gum in class - I wrote about why women should receive equal pay.

I accrued anger from people's low opinion of me and my work, and for the work I might be capable of.

In my opinion I do not think I am a better guitarist than Ace, I honestly think we're both different, and we both brought something unique to the musical.

The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one.

You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.

The fashion pages have always baffled me. In my opinion, the articles appear to be full of gobbledygook as to make the astrology column seem factual by comparison.

In my opinion we are at the limit now, and 17 races is really too much. With all the testing that we do now, it means we're always on the bike and it's quite difficult.

When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment.

The little I know of it has not served to raise my opinion of what is vulgarly called the Monied Interest; I mean, that blood-sucker, that muckworm, that calls itself the friend of government.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.

They won't choose Joakim Noah as the MVP, but I think it's great that he's in the conversation and he should be. But it's just not the way it works, from my experience. It's got to go in the basket for you guys to pay attention to somebody. But he's pretty damn valuable in my opinion.

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.

I am a Christian. I believe in God. I believe in Christ. Everybody is entitled to their own religion and their own opinion. I'm not saying I'm perfect and that I don't make mistakes. But I do believe in a higher power.