quotations about opinion
Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Change of opinion is increase of knowledge.
URIEL ACOSTA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Opinions, like weapons, are often made for defense as well as offense.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Leo Baeck, 1953
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
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
We should never wed an opinion for better or for worse; what we take upon good grounds, we should lay down upon better.
JONATHAN SWIFT
attributed, Day's Collacon
People of good sense are those whose opinions agree with ours.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Opinion, that great fool, makes fools of all,
And once I feared her, till I met a mind,
Whose grave instructions philosophical
Toss'd it like dust upon a March strong wind.
NATHANIEL FIELD
"To My Loved Friend, Master John Fletcher, On His Pastoral"
Sometimes I think you don't really believe the things you say; you just like the sound of yourself having opinions.
AMY REED
Crazy
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
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
The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Opinion! O opinion! How many men of slightest worth hast thou uplifted high in life's proud ranks?
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Opinion is a capricious tyrant to which many a freeborn man willingly binds himself a slave.
HORACE SMITH
attributed, Day's Collacon