quotations about opinion
Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.
HORACE SMITH
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
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?
WALTER LIPPMANN
Public Opinion
It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
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
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
The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Notebooks
Remember that all is opinion.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right.
ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
I May Not Be Totally Perfect, But Parts of Me Are Excellent
Men of wealth, especially self-made men, have as much pride about their opinions as the haughtiest aristocrat has about his pedigree.
JULIET CAMPBELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Emerson in His Journals
It's as simple as this. When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they won't really get on board.
PATRICK LENCIONI
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.
MARK TWAIN
"Corn Pone Opinions", Europe and Elsewhere
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
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
Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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
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
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
LEO TOLSTOY
Patriotism and Christianity