Public Opinion Quotes - Page 5

• The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.

  Sergey Nechayev

  Hate, Triumph, Criminals

  "The Revolutionary Catechism" by Sergey Nechayev, www.marxists.org. 1869.

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• A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people’s evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.

  Natsuo Kirino

  Lying, People, Choices

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• President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.

  Ken Follett

  Blow, One Direction, Wind

  Ken Follett (2011). “Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy”, p.347, Penguin

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• Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

  Wendell Phillips

  War, Law, Behinds

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.264

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• Public opinion: May it always perform one of its appropriate offices, by teaching the public functionaries of the State and of the Federal Government, that neither shall assume the exercise of powers entrusted by the Constitution to the other.

  James K. Polk

  Teaching, Exercise, Government

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• Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.

  Austin O'Malley

  Editors, Politician, Sail

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• The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Historical, Roles, Economics

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Public opinion is the last refuge of a politician without any opinion.

  Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham-Carter

  Political, Lasts, Politician

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• Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions.

  Dilma Rousseff

  Commitment, Views, Political

  "Dilma Rousseff: can Brazil's fighter survive the turmoil?" by Jonathan Watts and Bruce Douglas, www.theguardian.com. August 22, 2015.

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• 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.)

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Political, Investing, Obscure

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• Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Real, Cracks, Investing

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• There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Atheism, Court, Appeals

  Charles Bradlaugh (1890). “Speeches”

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• Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Scary, Pay, Scientific Method

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• If you look at the public opinion polls even, support for all the issues, people who self-identify as feminists are as least as many as those who self-identify as Republicans.

  Gloria Steinem

  Self, Issues, People

  Source: bluestockingsmag.com

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• 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.

  Eric Williams

  Play, Democracy, Apathy

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• Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Sacrifice, Long, Wish

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

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• When men exercise their reason coolly and freely, on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions, on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions if they are so to be called, will be the same.

  James Madison

  Fall, Passion, Exercise

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.237

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

  Alexander Hamilton

  Inquiry, Answers, Guides

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.56, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Light, Needs, Human Nature

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.25

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• There was a time when we were told . . . that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members...This language at the present day would appear as wild as that great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Wisdom Experience, Oracles, Lessons

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• Hitherto my observations have only aimed at a vindication of the provision in question, on the ground of theoretic propriety . . . . But there remains to be mentioned a positive advantage . . . I allude to the circumstance of uniformity in the time of elections for the House of Representatives. It is more than possible, that this uniformity may be found by experience to be of great importance to the public welfare; both as a security against the perpetuation of the same spirit in the body; and as a cure for the diseases of faction.

  Alexander Hamilton

  House, Body, May

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• 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.

  John Dickinson

  May, Individual, Should

  John Dickinson (1801). “The Political Writings of John Dickinson, Esquire: Late President of the State of Delaware, and of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania”, p.72

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• For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, Jobs, War

  Benjamin Disraeli's letter to Lord Grey de Wilton, October 3, 1873.

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• until ... the promiscuous woman is recognized, not only in law but in public opinion, as being neither better nor worse than the promiscuous man, equality has not been won in the moral sphere.

  Alison Roberta Noble Neilans

  Equality, Men, Law

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• The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!

  Adolf Hitler

  Military, Party, Democracy

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