Public Opinion Quotes - Page 2

• A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

  Warren Buffett

  Life, War, Generosity

  "7 insightful investing quotes from Warren Buffett", vintagevalueinvesting.com. September 28, 2017.

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• Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Sports, Artist, People

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• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, Cynical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

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• To speak seriously: the standards of "goodness" which are generally recognized by public opinion are not those which are calculated to make the world a happier place. This is due to a variety of causes, of which the chief is tradition, and the next most powerful is the unjust power of dominant classes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Powerful, Class, World

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.97, Psychology Press

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• Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Freedom, Independent, Democracy

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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• When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Often Is, Views, Command

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Society, Privacy, Weak

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.15

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• The world has progressed to the point where it's most powerful force is public opinion. And I believe that in this world it is not the great book or epic play, as once was the case, that will shape that opinion, but those who understand mass media and the techniques of mass persuasion...We must not just believe in what we sell. We must sell what we believe in. And we must pour a vast energy into those causes.

  William Bernbach

  Powerful, Believe, Book

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• Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

  Walter Bagehot

  Men, Influence, Speak

  "The Character of Sir Robert Peel" (1856)

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• A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Feelings, Society, Ill

  Address on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, delivered 16 October 1854, Peoria, Illinois

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

  Walter Benjamin

  Judging, Matter, Judgment

  Walter Benjamin (1996). “Selected Writings: 1927-1934”, p.433, Harvard University Press

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• There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Gaps, Policy, Opinion

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• Some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles-or who are looked upon with scorn as compromising "politicians"-are simply engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and enabling our Government to function.

  John F. Kennedy

  Art, Government, Today

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• In war, the moral element and public opinion are half the battle.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  War, Battle, Half

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• The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Law, Prejudice

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.475

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• There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  America, Groups, Force

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1933, Volume 2”, p.254, Best Books on

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• The film industry has become a universal medium exercising a profound influence on the development of people's attitudes and choices, and possessing a remarkable ability to influence public opinion and culture across all social and political frontiers.

  Pope John Paul II

  Attitude, Exercise, Profound

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• Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

  Samuel Johnson

  Boys, Men, World

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.522

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• They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

  Aleister Crowley

  Passion, Patriotic, Storm

  "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 57, 1969.

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• Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Faith, Art, Painting

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

  Bertrand Russell

  Respect, Humor, Unnecessary Things

  "The Conquest of Happiness".

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• Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Opinion, Worst

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1973). “Chamfort maxims: anecdotes, personalities, letters, historical writings, etc”

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• In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Animal, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

  Robert Peel

  Feelings, Weakness, Prejudice

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• Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Heart, Men, Essence

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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