C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Opinion
The blind goddess of fools.
Opinion is a bold bastard.
As many men, so many opinions.
Everything is mere opinion.
Happy opinions are the wine of the heart.
Opinion crowns with an imperial voice.
Public opinion is a second conscience.
Opinion, that great fool, makes fools of all.
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong.
Opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects.
The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater.
He who is master of all opinions can never be the bigot of any.
All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
We may print, but not stereotype, our opinions.
The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis.
I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.
An opinion may be controverted; a prejudice, never.
Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.
Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing.
Weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them.
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.
Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
We think very few people sensible except those who are of our opinion.
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.
The opinions of men who think are always growing and changing, like living children.
The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.
Opinion is a medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Race and temperament go for much in influencing opinion.
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.
The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.
A man’s opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments.
He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
With us law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
It is not only arrogant, but it is profligate, for a man to disregard the world’s opinion of himself.
It is on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.
There are opinions which come from the heart, and whoever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.
If I for my opinion bleed, opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt, and keep me on the side where still I am.
Correct opinions well established on any subject are the best preservative against the seduction of error.
No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.
To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.
That the voice of the common people is the voice of God is as full of falsehood as commonness.
It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinion at all upon important subjects.
What people will say—in these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere.
In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories—the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.
Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality.
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, and learning, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!
Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.
I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise.
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing in that from which within a few days I might dissent myself.
Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!
Were a whole nation to start upon a new career of education, with mature faculties and minds free from prepossession or prejudice, how much would be quickly abandoned that is now most stubbornly cherished!
The free expression of opinion, as our experience has taught us, is the safety-valve of passion. That noise of the rushing steam, when it escapes, alarms the timid; but it is the sign that we are safe.
The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the chief wall of defence around property and life. With the progress of society, this power of opinion is taking the place of arms.
He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty.
Who observes not that the voice of the people, yea of that people that voiced themselves the people of God, did prosecute the God of all people, with one common voice, “He is worthy to die.” I will not, therefore, ambitiously beg their voices for my preferment; nor weigh my worth in that uneven balance, in which a feather of opinion shall be moment enough to turn the scales and make a light piece go current, and a current piece seem light.