Quotes About Opinions

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.

Aw, no. You’re taking us to that vegetarian place, aren’t you? It’s a coffee place. You can’t just automatically classify anything that isn’t a steak house as vegetarian. Yes, I can. This is America. You said Americans assert their own opinions as if they were facts and dismiss inconvenient facts as mere opinions.

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.

Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

I love audiences, but they're not there to drive the bus. Whenever you ask opinions or anticipate opinions you can get pretty terrible art, or non-art. You need a single guiding intelligence, even in a collaborative form.

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

When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.

The important thing is to realize that no matter what people's opinions may be, they're only just that - people's opinions. You have to believe in your heart what you know to be true about yourself. And let that be that.

I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them.

I think journalists have the right to their opinions but I think their opinions should be based on history and what they see, not what they feel, how long they've been waiting or whether it's raining or it's snowing or whatever.

Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make, which causes loss of self-respect, is making the opinions of others more important than our own opinion of ourselves. You'll find no shortage of opinions directed at you. If you allow them to undermine your self-respect, you're seeking the respect of others over your own, and you're abdicating yourself.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

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.

You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

On everything you need to hear other people's opinions. It's the only way to do things. You ask a friend's advice and then between the two of you things somehow get clearer.

We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments.

Are you smarter than a pig, Locke?” “On occasion,” said Locke. “There are contrary opinions.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

My books don't seem to belong to me after I have once written them; and I find myself delivering opinions about them as if I had nothing to do with them.

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

When dealing with the internet, I knew that people would have their own opinions, and I went into it with that in mind.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

When we are truly confident and secure, the opinions of others cannot control us.

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.

There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.

Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything.

I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses... 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

It is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.

I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions.

It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.

In Texas, you just learn just be nice to people and respect them, and respect where they're coming from. And understand people have different backgrounds and opinions, and there's nothing you could do about it. And that's what I've realized to shape, I guess, who I am.

The problem is: When two governments or institutions in Europe hold differing opinions, it is immediately a crisis.

Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.

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.

We have to learn how scientists arrive at decisions. Once you use the scientific method, it doesn't mean that your decisions will be perfect. They'll be far more accurate than just opinions.

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.

Never for a moment believe that the great body of the citizens of any State or States can deliberately intend to do wrong. They may, under the influence of temporary excitement or misguided opinions, commit mistakes; they may be misled for a time by the suggestions of self-interest; but in a community so enlightened and patriotic as the people of the United States argument will soon make them sensible of their errors, and when convinced they will be ready to repair them.

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

The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

The human mind is like a fertile ground were seed are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought grows, and it grows. The word is like a seed and the human mind is so fertile!

Everyone is entitled to have their own opinions.

I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.