quotations about opinion
If then I am addressing one of that numerous class, who read to be told what to think, let me advise you to meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnished: do not come to look for it in a stonequarry. But if you are building up your opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you.
JULIUS HARE
Guesses at Truth
That queen of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not deceive always; she would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood.
PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opinion is the blind goddess of fools.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
attributed, Day's Collacon
In whatever opinion we are confirmed, we consider our discrimination perfectly judicious; when we change that opinion for another, we are the same; when we relapse into a former tenet, we are so too: in the greatest deviation of principle or profession, we are still confident; and were we to progress in rapid and endless diversity of sentiment or persuasion, confidence, certainty, and inscrutable assurance would, perhaps, ever be our concomitant guides.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
All classes of persons are ever ready to give their opinions; the lawyers must be excepted, they sell theirs.
GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE
Prenticeana
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
introduction, Sceptical Essays
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
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
JOHN LOCKE
dedicatory epistle, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
A man should change his opinion as often as he finds it wrong.
ROBERT CARY
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Heretics
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
MARK TWAIN
What Is Man?
If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.
THOMAS A KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
Persecution is only an attempt to do that overtly and with violence, which the community is, in self-defense, perpetually doing unconsciously and in silence. In many societies variation of belief is practically impossible. In other societies it is permitted only along certain definite lines. In no society that has ever existed, or could be conceived as existing, are opinions equally free (in the scientific sense of the term, not the legal) to develop themselves indifferently in all directions.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Opinion is more often the cause of discontent than nature.
EPICURUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
speech, June 12, 1942
A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.
JAMES MADISON
Federalist No. 10, November 22, 1787
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays