Public Opinion Quotes

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

If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

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

Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities...

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.

If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism.

Only fools, pure theorists, or apprentices fail to take public opinion into account.

Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

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

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

If you make too many things too public, then you end up living your life before the court of public opinion.

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

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

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.

No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.

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.

Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion

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

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.

In America, public opinion is the leader

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

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

The power of an aroused public is unbeatable.

I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account.

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

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

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

Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly [...] All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.

The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion.

Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power,
to which everything must yield.
There is nothing more fickle,
more vague,
or more powerful;
yet capricious as it is,
it is nevertheless much more often true,
reasonable,
and just,
than we imagine.

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

Creation of effective public opinion depends on the cultivation of true courage, born of truthfulness and nonviolence.

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

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

There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense by the attacked society itself

Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'.

But there was no room at the inn"; the inn is the gathering place of public opinion; so often public opinion locks its doors to the King.

A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.

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

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

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.

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.

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

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

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

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.

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.)