Public Opinion Quotes

• Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ignorance, Community, Dignity

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.118, Courier Corporation

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• When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Political, Honor, Progress

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

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Government, Opinion

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.43, Best Books on

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• Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

  Mark Twain

  God, Thinking, Voice

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.44, St. Martin's Press

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• Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Power, Politics, Should

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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• A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.

  Grantland Rice

  Confidence, Wise, Wisdom

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• If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wise, People, Atheism

  W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.61, Random House

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• There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Coward, Opinion

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Opinion, Sentiments

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.5029, Delphi Classics

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

  Winston Churchill

  Life, Motivational, Popular Opinion

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• It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

  James F. Cooper

  Freedom, Men, Democracies Have

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.

  James Madison

  Mind, Different, Gloss

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793”, p.510

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• Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

  James Madison

  Real, Government, Sovereign

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.460

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• A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

  Warren Buffett

  Life, War, Generosity

  "7 insightful investing quotes from Warren Buffett", vintagevalueinvesting.com. September 28, 2017.

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• Public opinion in this country is everything.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Government, Political

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46”, p.57, Library of America

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• Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.

  Walter Lippmann

  Fall, Government, Order

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.241, Harvard University Press

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• Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Society, Privacy, Weak

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.15

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• Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

  Walter Bagehot

  Men, Influence, Speak

  "The Character of Sir Robert Peel" (1856)

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• Somewhere "out there," beyond the walls of the courthouse, run currents and tides of public opinion which lap at the courtroom door.

  William Rehnquist

  Running, Wall, Doors

  Address at Suffolk University Law School; quoted in "The New York Times", April 17, 1986.

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• A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

  Madame de Stael

  Men, Faces, Submit

  "Delphine". Book by Madame de Stael, 1802.

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• Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.

  William Ralph Inge

  Average, Tyrants, Vulgar

  Outspoken Essays Our Present Discontents (p. 9)

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• Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Strong, Legislature, Ten Commandments

  Charles Dudley Warner (2006). “My Summer in a Garden: Easyread Large Edition”, p.108, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• American public opinion is like an ocean, it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Ocean, Opinion, Teaspoons

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• It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

  Jonathan Swift

  Mistake, Coffee, Echoes

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1824). “-5. Tracts, historical and political, during the reign of Queen Anne”, p.365

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• Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Confidence, Tyrants, Anxiety

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.8, Xist Publishing

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