Quotes About Opinion

Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans.

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

Last week, for the first time, I read Herman Melville's ''Moby Dick.'' It really amazed me by its badness.

you do not get what is the foundation of the very liberty that we breathe, that the people are entitled to have the facts, that the judgment of the government itself is subject to their opinion and to their control, and in order to exercise that, they are entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Senator.

People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know.

I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

Half of politics is image-making, the other half is the art of making people believe the image

They therefore never knew how to evaluate antisemitism, or rather never recognized the moment when social discrimination changed into a political argument. For more than a hundred years, antisemitism had slowly and gradually made its way into almost all social strata in almost all European countries until it emerged suddenly as the one issue upon which an almost unified opinion could be achieved.

Since no one is capable of forming his own opinion without the benefit of a multitude of opinions held by others, the rule of public opinion endangers even the opinion of those few who may have the strength not to share it. This is one of the reasons for the curiously sterile negativism of all opinions which oppose a popularly acclaimed tyranny. [...] public opinion, by virtue of its unanimity, provokes a unanimous opposition and thus kills true opinions everywhere.

What public opinion permits us to judge and even to condemn are trends, or whole groups of people--the larger the better--in short, something so general that distinctions can no longer be made, names no longer named. Needless to add, this taboo applies doubly when the deeds or words of famous people or men in high position are being questioned.

For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility—based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men—is in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.

The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint.

it is rare to meet people who believe they possess the truth; instead, we are constantly confronted by those who are sure that they are right.

far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.

So what does she think?" Esperanza asked again. "About what?" "About the prospects for peace in the Middle East," she snapped. "What do you think I mean? Your playing again.

an ugly hatchet man who considered Kmart velour sweatpants haute couture.

Never has the political class or the mainstream media that covers them been more out of touch with the American people than they are today.

Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

Censorship is a touchy subject, all the way around.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

Athletes aren't allowed to have an opinion. It's tough. Athletes are evolving right in front of our eyes. You see athletes who are politicians, etc., and still, we're told to shut up and dribble.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.