Opinion is a bold bastard. [ Quarles ]
Everything is mere opinion. [ Marcus Antoninus ]
The blind goddess of fools. [ Chapman ]
That is exactly my opinion. [ German Proverb ]
As many men, so many opinions. [ Terence ]
Our own opinion is never wrong. [ Proverb ]
A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still. [ Butler ]
He that complies against his will,
is of the same opinion still. [ Butler ]
Backed his opinion with quotations. [ Prior ]
He that complies against his will.
Is of his own opinion still.
Which he may adhere to, yet disown,
For reasons to himself best known. [ Butler ]
Opinion crowns with an imperial voice. [ William Shakespeare ]
Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong. [ Dryden ]
Public opinion is a second conscience. [ W. R. Alger ]
Live not upon the opinion of other men. [ Proverb ]
Nature needs little; opinion exacts much.
Opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects. [ William Shakespeare ]
Happy opinions are the wine of the heart. [ Leigh Hunt ]
All worldly happiness consists in opinion. [ Proverb ]
Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools. [ Socrates ]
Opinion, that great fool, makes fools of all. [ Field ]
We may print, but not stereotype, our opinions. [ Whately ]
Some praise at morning what they blame at night.
But always think the last opinion right. [ Pope ]
It is self-conceit that makes opinion obstinate. [ Proverb ]
Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. [ Proverb ]
Some men plant an opinion they seem to eradicate. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
An opinion may be controverted; a prejudice, never. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
Greatness, once and for ever, has done with opinion. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Opinion is a medium between knowledge and ignorance. [ Plato ]
I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. [ William Shakespeare ]
Venture your opinion, but not thyself, for your opinion. [ Proverb ]
Race and temperament go for much in influencing opinion. [ Lady Morgan ]
A woman submits to the yoke of opinion, but a man rebels. [ De Finod ]
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion. [ Lowell ]
It is the opinion of men that makes the reputation of women. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market. [ Colton ]
Power's footstool is opinion, and his throne the human heart. [ Sir Aubrey de Vere ]
All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion. [ Hume ]
He who is master of all opinions tan never be the bigot of any. [ W. R. Alger ]
Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other. [ Pascal ]
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. [ Beecher ]
Weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them. [ William Shakespeare ]
Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted. [ Swift ]
Diversity of opinion proves that things are only what we think them. [ Montaigne ]
Opinion, which on crutches walks, And sounds the words another talks. [ Lloyd ]
Obstinacy and vehemency in opinion are the surest proofs of stupidity. [ Barton ]
We think very few people sensible except those who are of our opinion. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant. [ Pascal ]
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. [ Thomas Jefferson ]
No man is willing to own him, who is out of the good opinion of the world. [ Proverb ]
Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing. [ Tillotson ]
It takes identity of sentiment, and variety of opinion, to make a dialogue. [ J. Paul F. Richter ]
We must sometimes cease to adhere to our own opinion for the sake of peace. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion. [ Emerson ]
Power is the queen of the world, not opinion; but opinion makes use of power. [ Pascal ]
The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis. [ Glanvill ]
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against Providence. [ Pope ]
Men should allow others excellences, to preserve a modest opinion of their own. [ Barrow ]
To discuss an opinion with a fool is like carrying a lantern before a blind man. [ De Gaston ]
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human. [ Plutarch ]
I have a very poor opinion of a man who talks to men what women should not hear. [ Richardson ]
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods. [ Hazlitt ]
A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments. [ Holmes ]
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth. [ Joubert ]
Perseverance is the continuance in any design, state, opinion, or course of action. [ C. Buck ]
With us law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. [ Disraeli ]
The opinions of men who think are always growing and changing, like living children. [ Hamerton ]
Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves. [ Montaigne ]
Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force. [ Pascal ]
Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable. [ Daniel Webster ]
That the voice of the common people is the voice of God is as full of falsehood as commonness. [ Warwick ]
No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion. [ Cicero ]
He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave. [ Klopstock ]
Honor is unstable, and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food. [ Colton ]
In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man. [ Macaulay ]
Happiness generally depends more on the opinion we have of things, than on the things themselves. [ Proverb ]
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it. [ Mme. Roland ]
The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion. [ Johnson ]
It is not only arrogant, but it is profligate, for a man to disregard the world's opinion of himself. [ Cicero ]
Happiness is matter of opinion, of fancy, in fact, but it must amount to conviction, else it is nothing. [ Chamfort ]
If I for my opinion bleed, opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt, and keep me on the side where still I am [ William Shakespeare ]
There are opinions which come from the heart, and whoever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings. [ Joubert ]
Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Correct opinions well established on any subject are the best preservative against the seduction of error. [ Bishop Mant ]
The too good opinion man has of himself is the nursing-mother of all false opinions, both public and private. [ Montaigne ]
My opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sureness the moment a second mind has adopted it. [ Novalis ]
To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth. [ Venning ]
Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
Much of the pleasure, and all the benefit of conversation, depends upon our own opinion of the speaker's veracity. [ Paley ]
In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the church, counted its martyrs by thousands. [ James A. Garfield ]
We seldom find persons whom we acknowledge to be possessed of good sense, except those who agree with us in opinion. [ Rochefoucauld ]
There is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually can become right merely by their multitude. [ Ruskin ]
The love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary. [ Swift ]
In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy dying, in which human happiness consists. [ Montaigne ]
What is a philosopher? One who opposes nature to law, reason to usage, conscience to opinion, and his judgment to error. [ Chamfort ]
You may set it down as a truth, which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
In the opinion of the world marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the reverse; it begins all. [ Mme. Swetchine ]
Truth is one, forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the dispositions of the spectator. [ Wendell Phillips ]
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. [ Montaigne ]
Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel. [ Hume ]
Discover the opinion of your enemies, which is commonly the truest; for they will give you no quarter, and allow nothing to complaisance. [ Dryden ]
You may fail to shine, in the opinion of others, both in your conversation and actions, from being superior, as well as inferior to them. [ Greville ]
The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance. [ Montaigne ]
We may wager that any idea of the public, or any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received the approbation of a majority of the people. [ Chamfort ]
The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Confidence, as opposed to modesty and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, and is occasioned by ignorance and flattery. [ Jeremy Collier ]
You begin in error when you suggest that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. [ Plato ]
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. [ Joubert ]
Every man's experience of today is that he was a fool yesterday and the day before yesterday. Tomorrow he will most likely be of exactly the same opinion. [ Charles Mackay ]
When a man gives proof that his heart is sound and that his life is sound, there is no divergence of opinion that should keep us from fellowship with him. [ Ward Beecher ]
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. [ W. R. Alger ]
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! [ Swift ]
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. [ Sydney Smith ]
The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade. [ Ben Jonson ]
I am of opinion that there are no proverbial sayings which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences. [ Cervantes ]
A man's opinion of danger varies at different times, in consequence of an irregular tide of animal spirits; and he is actuated by considerations which he dares not avow. [ Smollett ]
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. [ Hume ]
The coquette compromises her reputation, and sometimes saves her virtue: the prude, on the contrary, often sacrifices her honor in secret, and preserves it in public opinion. [ Mme. du Socage ]
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. [ James A. Garfield ]
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. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
Charity commandeth us, where we know no ill, to think well of all; but friendship, that always goes a step higher, gives a man a peculiar right and claim to the good opinion of his friend. [ R. South ]
What the tender and poetic youth dreams today, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is tomorrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the character of nations. [ Emerson ]
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! [ Pascal ]
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. [ Horace Mann ]
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. [ Auerbach ]
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. [ Pascal ]
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! [ Chatfield ]
In my opinion, the unjust man whose tongue is full of glozing rhetoric, merits the heaviest punishment; vaunting that he can with his tongue gloze over injustice, he dares to act wickedly, yet he is not over-wise. [ Euripides ]
Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you. [ Epictetus ]
If opinion hath lighted the lamp of thy name, endeavor to encourage it with thy own oil, lest it go out and stink; the chronical disease of popularity is shame: if thou be once up, beware: from fame to infamy is a beaten road. [ Quarles ]
Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced. [ Bishop Hall ]
What is the world, or its opinion, to him who has studied in the lives of men the mysteries of their egotism and perfidy! He knows that the best and most generous hearts are often forced to tread the thorny paths, where insults and outrages are heaped upon them! [ George Sand ]
Two qualities are demanded of a statesman who would direct any great movement of opinion in which he himself takes a part; he must have a complete understanding of the movement itself, and he must be animated by the same motives as those which inspire the movement. [ Lamartine ]
I am of opinion that there is nothing so beautiful but that there is something still more beautiful, of which this is the mere image and expression, - a something which can neither be perceived by the eyes, the ears, nor any of the senses; we comprehend it merely in the imagination. [ Cicero ]
In my opinion mothers ought to bring up and suckle their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them; but the love of a nurse is spurious and counterfeit, as loving them only for hire. [ Plutarch ]
Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country, every wave rolls it, all give it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce of ideas, there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make up the mind and opinion of the age. [ Daniel Webster ]
Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]
Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight. [ Emerson ]
We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure. [ Landor ]
If a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their good opinion or good word, it were then no great matter (speaking as to the concernments of this world), if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw; but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end. [ Tillotson ]