Quotes About Opinion

After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'

And the American public was able to make up their own mind whether this verdict was a just verdict or not. So I think there's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works or doesn't work, so I think there's a definite value there.

Choosing how you vote should not be a snap verdict based on a few minutes of television.

I do feel bad when my films don't do well, but I respect audiences' verdict because they know well which films to support. If they don't like a film, we should accept it.

One of the risks of a public trial is a public verdict.

In my view, a review should be like talking to a friend who's just asked you, 'What was it like?' You're giving a verdict on an experience, not trying for a definitive last judgment.

You can verify that in news meetings I sometimes say, 'This is skewed too far to the left,' or 'The mix of stories seems overweeningly appealing to a reader with a certain set of sensibilities, and it shouldn't.'

When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.

The vast majority of free verse is ghastly. Utterly ghastly. No one reads it. No one listens to it.

But a big or little rascal? I don't have a high enough opinion of historical research to lose my time over a dead man whose hand, if he were alive, I would not deign to touch. What do I know about him? You couldn't dream of a better life than his: but did he live it? If only his letters weren't so formal. . . . Ah

Still, it's always nice to be around somebody who thinks I am wonderful. It confirms my low opinion of people.

Certainly no one on-site asked for my opinion, but I have always felt there should be no leftovers. It's untidy, and it shows a lack of a real workmanlike spirit.

Two minutes later she walked into my office carrying her own copy of the report. "What did you think?" she said, sliding into a chair and waving the pages. "I don't like his prose style," I said. "And the plot seems very familiar." "Don't be an asshole," she said. "I got a briefing in a half hour, and I need to have something to say to everybody." I

Which one I like better?" "That's the question, Mr. Tour Guide." I felt suddenly awkward, like I was being tested on something I hadn't studied for. I didn't really know which one I liked more. The only photos I looked at regularly were surveillance and crime scene shots. Aesthetics didn't count. Finally

My lord, if a man cannot express his honestly held views in the Central Criminal Court, perhaps you can advise me where else he is free to state that which he believes to be the truth?

Perhaps it's appallingly written, boring, without merit and unworthy of our time, but at least let us be the judge of that.

you know that peanut butter's now considered a hate crime? Because it totally is.]

Ideally, our public opinion should be based on established facts. Would we feel less ill at ease if we allowed the whole story to unfold, waiting a beat before becoming judge, jury, and executioner? I suspect yes.

What's so scary is that mob rule has displaced due process. The faceless masses are America's new arbiters of justice. I'm so fearful of the court of public opinion that I've stopped saying anything of value online, stopped unpacking what's important in my life, stopped trying to forge any kind of understanding over social media.

What's so scary is that mob rule has displaced due process. The faceless masses are America's new arbiters of justice. I'm so fearful of the court of public opinion that I've stopped saying anything of value online, stopped unpacking what's important in my life, stopped trying to forge any kind of understanding over social media. I mostly post shots of my pets and complain about the weather. It's edgy stuff.

Because if you base your self-worth on what everyone else thinks of you, you hand all your power over to other people and become dependent on a source outside of yourself for validation. Then you wind up chasing after something you have no control over, and should that something suddenly place its focus somewhere else, or change its mind and decide you're no longer very interesting, you end up with a full-blown identity crisis.

Better Peter than me

Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside," is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, "the average person," but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.

We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.