Quotes About Opinions

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.

I am ready to disclaim my opinion, even of yesterday, even of 10 minutes ago, because all opinions are relative. One lives in a field of influences, one is influenced by everyone one meets, everything is an exchange of influences, all opinions are derivative. Once you deal a new deck of cards, you've got a new deck of cards.

The one who wanders independent in the world, free from opinions and viewpoints, does not grasp them and enter into disputations and arguments. As the lotus rises on its stalk unsoiled by the mud and the water, so the wise one speaks of peace and is unstained by the opinions of the world.

The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.

Whereas the average individuals "often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are," self-actualizing individuals have "superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general."

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.

You're going to run into a great deal of opinions. I think that's just fertile ground for us. What else would you want to write a show about than something that is that much of a pressure cooker, that has that much influence and impact? We're going to run into a lot of different opinions, but it's inspiring to me that newsmen and newswomen have reached out and said how thrilled they are with what we're doing.

In my ugly, elitist opinion we are not all entitled to voice our opinions, we are entitled to pass along our informed opinions.

One thing is certain: the time will come when the opinions of priests and doctors must give way to the science of life; for their opinions lead to death and misery, and the science of life is health and happiness.

Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this.

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

The promotion of "self-esteem" in our schools has been so successful that people feel free to spout off about all sorts of things - and see no reason why their opinions should not be taken as seriously as the views of people who actually know what they are talking about.

The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today's vineyard, the military-industrial complex. They've got to be processed in the most efficient way to see to it that they have the fewest dissenting opinions, that they have just those characteristics which are wholly incompatible with being an intellectual. This is a real internal psychological contradiction. People have to suppress the very questions which reading books raises.

When I was being bullied, I had to learn not to judge myself by the opinions of intolerant morons. Then I felt much better.

[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.

Opinions are like feet. Everybody's got a couple, and they usually stink.

I think those women who get themselves to write essays, it's not an easy thing to do because as women, you're not encouraged to think; you're encouraged to feel. This is a broad, broad statement. So I think those women who go out on a limb and publish essays are highly conscious of how they are writing their opinions.

There are always a lot of leading questions and opinions. Of course, our work is creative, and it's subjective.

An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.

I don't believe that math and nature respond to democracy. Just because very clever people have rejected the role of the infinite, their collective opinions, however weighty, won't persuade mother nature to alter her ways. Nature is never wrong.

Stand-up for me is just my opinions on things, so it wouldnt be as fun translated into a sketch. Nor would a sketch be as fun if it were me standing there saying it.

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head.

In the end, the whole Internet thing kills me, because you can use it as a positive thing or you can read into all the negativity. And I think youve gotta put out positive energy, put out cool viral stuff, and then just stay out of peoples opinions.

If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.

Everyone's opinions about things change over time. Nothing is constant. Everything changes. And to hold onto some dogged idea forever is a little rigid and maybe naive.

The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.

Opinions, from experts, cost money.

So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many unexploded certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel they are always right and who attached a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home. When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.

New Rule: Stop asking Miss USA contestants if they believe in evolution. It’s not their field. It’s like asking Stephen Hawking if he believes in hair scrunchies. Here’s what they know about: spray tans, fake boobs and baton twirling. Here’s what they don’t know about: everything else. If I cared about the uninformed opinions of some ditsy beauty queen, I’d join the Tea Party.

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct.

In my work I now have the comfortable feeling that I am so to speak on my own ground and territory and almost certainly not competing in an anxious race and that I shall not suddenly read in the literature that someone else had done it all long ago. It is really at this point that the pleasure of research begins, when one is, so to speak, alone with nature and no longer worries about human opinions, views and demands. To put it in a way that is more learned than clear: the philological aspect drops out and only the philosophical remains.

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.

I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.

If our core belief is based on what other people think, then we eventually will allow their opinions to become our reality.

One should respect an honest person even if he expresses opinions differing from one's own.

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

The eyes and ears, seeing and hearing, are external plunderers; emotions, desires, and opinions are internal plunderers. But if the inner mind is awake and alert, sitting aloof in the middle of it all, then these plunderers change and become members of the household.

Most people who are activists and are concerned about issues get their information from sources which reinforce their opinions and give them the facts that they want to hear.

Opinions are like phasers - everybody ought to have one.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

It is not always possible to have everything go as one likes. In working with allies, it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own

I know I'm not supposed to have any opinions about politics, because I'm famous.