Public Opinion Quotations

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

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.

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

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

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

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation

No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

People have tried to corner the market on being offended, corner the market on language and corner the market on opinion. Should I lose my job 'cause I offended somebody? No, of course not. Your life should never be affected by public opinion.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.

Public opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress of human affairs.

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

The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.

And I like to convey my feelings, my emotions, my experience, the information I have to public use, public opinion.

Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.

A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.

As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.

Journalists should denounce government by public opinion polls.

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

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

American public opinion is like an ocean, it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.

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

Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don't read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2's audience.

There's a big gap between public opinion polls and the vote in Washington, in Congress. The majority consciousness has changed, and often that has made very clear, practical changes in our daily lives, but the centers of power are still not occupied, for the most part, by this new consciousness.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.

I know where there is more wisdom than is found in Napoleon, Voltaire, or all the ministers present and to come - in public opinion.

In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition for social progress.

American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against airstrikes to being heavily in favor that [President Obama] decided to do airstrikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind where he waits for public opinion. And now it's the public who's demanding he do something.

Absolute truth is not dependent upon public opinion or popularity. Now what is this truth? It is His gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because you're a crime writer you're asked to have a point of view on a lot of things, and I'm uncomfortable having public opinions on things that are not my professional area.

He never sought to stem the current. [Of a statesman who accommodates his views to public opinion.]

We have seen already how resistant public opinion is, firstly to comprehension of the new paradigm in which we have to operate; and secondly, to the rationale behind the decisions we have had to take.

In my life right now, in my music, and just overall I feel like I'm winning. It doesn't matter what this person is saying or what the charts are saying or what award shows are saying, the public opinion doesn't matter. I feel like I'm winning in my spirit.

The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history.

The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion.

Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.

Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates.

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

I think you can not be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.

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

Hitherto my observations have only aimed at a vindication of the provision in question, on the ground of theoretic propriety . . . . But there remains to be mentioned a positive advantage . . . I allude to the circumstance of uniformity in the time of elections for the House of Representatives. It is more than possible, that this uniformity may be found by experience to be of great importance to the public welfare; both as a security against the perpetuation of the same spirit in the body; and as a cure for the diseases of faction.

The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!

While public opinion might sway back and forth, right and wrong do not.

the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.

I try not to read newspapers when I have a movie coming out, but I guess I'm not immune to public opinion. I'm hurt by it.

The Lord's truth is not altered by fads, trends or public opinion.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus When he said the world was round.

Democracy, finally, rests on a higher power than Parliament. It rests on an informed and cultivated and alert public opinion. The Members of Parliament are only representatives of the citizens. They cannot represent apathy and indifference. They can play the part allotted to them only if they represent intelligence and public spiritness.

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics.

In America, public opinion is the leader

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don't see why anybody does.

In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.

I do not regret having braved public opinion, when I knew it was wrong and was sure it would be merciless.

What is public opinion? It is private indolence.

Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

Sound conviction should influence us rather than public opinion.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.)

When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.

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

The course of business shapes public opinion.

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

Unless you can point to something that I have done or said that has changed the course of the public opinion in a negative way, you've got to check yourself sometimes and say, "Maybe I don't like the way that this thing is said, but it's expanding tolerance." If I said something that was shutting down something that was positive, call me out, but I don't really see me doing that.

The court doesn't follow public opinion. The court's views are radically out of step with public opinion.

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns among the stupid.

For public opinion does not admit that lofty rapturous laughter is worthy to stand beside lofty lyrical emotion and that there isall the difference in the world between it and the antics of a clown at a fair.

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

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

With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable. They have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered.

Public opinion's always in advance of the law.

What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.

From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.

According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.

I am a pop artist, so my medium is public opinion and the world is my canvas

They are lying every day. They are lying always, and mainly they are lying to their public opinion

I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.

The big powers are traveling on the dangerous road of armament. The signpost just ahead of us is 'Oblivion.' Can the march on this road be stopped? Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has.

I don't know what is stronger or what is weaker.The whole language of strength and weaknesses is irrelevant,because when you use arms you do not use ballots, and public opinion is unimportant, and they shoot at their opponents.

As to whether I will ever get out, it will obviously take some large measures of public opinion because the judiciary system of America is totally interlaced with bureaucratic influences that perpetuate FBI control over judges, prosecutors and court proceedings.

To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion.

The only remaining superpower is international public opinion.

Public opinion has been evolving nationwide when it comes to marijuana policy, and Californians have always been ahead of the curve.

Judges . . . rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should...

Press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the...

We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them.

Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.

Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.