Quotes About Opinion

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

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.

When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine. Why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ...Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.

They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.

No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.

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.

Think you have a low opinion of government? You should see government's opinion of you!

Because the task of a political leader is to do what he believes is better for his country. Sometimes the public opinion is in favor; sometimes the public opinion needs a little bit more time to understand things.

There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration.

In an argument, you may silence your opponent by pressing an advantage of strength or of wealth, or of education. But you do not really convince him. Though he is no longer saying anything, in his heart he still keeps to his opinion, the only way to make him change that opinion is to speak quietly and reasonably. When he understands that you are not trying to defeat him, but only to find the truth, he will listen to you and perhaps accept what you tell him.

I don't feel ignored. But I'd rather engage readers than dictate my opinion to them. Opinion is so...subjective!

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.

This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion.

When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.

Every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended.

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."

But, as Bacon has well pointed out, truth is more likely to come out of error, if this is clear and definite, than out of confusion, and my experience teaches me that it is better to hold a well-understood and intelligible opinion, even if it should turn out to be wrong, than to be content with a muddle-headed mixture of conflicting views, sometimes miscalled impartiality, and often no better than no opinion at all.

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again.

[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

The opinion of the majority or the minority is of no importance! The important thing is the opinion of the Truth, of the Reason, of the Logic, of the High Intelligence!

The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here in Europe.

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?

If somebody asks for my opinion, I tell them my opinion, whether it's what they want to hear or not.

Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." ["Delenda est Carthago."]

If you want to get each individual's honest opinion, you don't want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, of in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value.

It is a generally received opinion that there are too many books in the world already. I cannot, however, subscribe to any Institution that proposes to alter this state of affairs, because I find no consensus of opinion as to which are the superfluous books.

An opinion, though it is original, does not necessarily differ from the accepted opinion; the important thing is that it does not try to conform to it.

The clearer and deeper the public opinion of the world, in the first instance the opinion of the working masses, will understand the contradictions and the difficulties of the socialist development of an isolated country, the higher will it appreciate the results achieved. The less it identifies the fundamental methods of Socialism with the zigzags and errors of the Soviet bureaucracy, the less will be the danger that, by the inevitable revelation of these errors and of their consequences, the authority, not only of the present ruling group, but of the workers' State itself, may decline.

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

James Franco has this interesting and relaxed look. It's pretty 'I don't care,' but it still looks good. Ryan Gosling also has amazing style. I take a lot of my fashion tips from those two. In my opinion, they're the ones getting it right.

I never have an opinion about clothes and know nothing about fashion.

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

During 'Chicago Hope,' I never let directors talk to me, because I was so spoiled. I started off with people like Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet, James Lapine, unbelievably gifted people. So there I was saying, 'Don't talk to me, I don't want your opinion.' I behaved abominably.

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.

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 think as a woman, the more you embrace who you are, and your own opinions, and how you feel, and the body you have been given- I think the more confident you are and the more beautiful you look. I definitely feel that my confidence has grown as I've entered my 30s. I have my own opinion - it's very valid - and that shows on the outside as well.

I would beg the wise and learned fathers (of the church) to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration. ... [I]t is not in the power of professors of the demonstrative sciences to alter their opinions at will, so as to be now of one way of thinking and now of another. ... [D]emonstrated conclusions about things in nature of the heavens, do not admit of being altered with the same ease as opinions to what is permissible or not, under a contract, mortgage, or bill of exchange.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me.

They can say I have an opinion about something.

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.