Quotes on Public Opinion

The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

The artist is chosen by God to fulfill his commands and must never be overwhelmed by public opinion.

I believe if a private citizen is able to affect public opinion in a constructive way, he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform a public service.

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

Those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights.

When men exercise their reason coolly and freely, on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions, on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions if they are so to be called, will be the same.

Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.

It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.

Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.

Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.

This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.

It will not be enough to rely on experts. Ordinary citizens must become experts too. It will take public opinion on a wide scale to ensure that world leaders act.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

Public opinion in this country is everything.

Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation.

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.