Public Opinion Quotes - Page 7

• Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead public opinion: it just selectively stops censorship. In other words, just as censorship is a political tool, so is the absence of censorship.

  Michael Anti

  Government, Political, Chinese

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• They are lying every day. They are lying always, and mainly they are lying to their public opinion

  Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

  Funny, Military, Lying

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• It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.

  Ariel Sharon

  Israel, Land, Numbers

  Agence France Presse, en.wikipedia.org. November 15, 1998.

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• I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct opposition in all points to the real and wholesome success. One adores public opinion, the other, private opinion; one, fame, the other, desert; one, feats, the other, humility; one, lucre, the other, love; one, monopoly, and the other, hospitality of mind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Real, Humility

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.246, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Healthy, Debate

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.353, Rajpal & Sons

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• I do not regret having braved public opinion, when I knew it was wrong and was sure it would be merciless.

  Horace Greeley

  Regret, Would Be, Opinion

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• For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Love, Perfection, Being Thankful

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.50, CUP Archive

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• The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.

  Joseph Story

  Passion, Yield, Rights

  Joseph Story (1858). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: with a preliminary review of the constitutional history of the colonies and states, before the adoption of the Constitution”, p.464

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• When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Blow, Numbers, Long

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.178, University of Chicago Press

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• A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

  Thomas Paine

  Party, Moving, Greatness

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Rights of Man: With a Brief Historical Preface”, p.98

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• It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.

  George Washington

  Real, Reflection, Voice

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1838). “The writings of George Washington”, p.122

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• Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.

  James F. Cooper

  Break Up, Government, United States

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• I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion]. . . . We were looking for some sexy, catchy slogans to capture public opinion. They were very cynical slogans then, just as all of these slogans today are very, very cynical.

  Bernard Nathanson

  Sexy, Laughing, Cynical

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• There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense by the attacked society itself

  Gene Sharp

  Strong, Defense, Pressure

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• From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.

  Johan Huizinga

  Looks, Demand, Judgment

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• The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

  Albert Schweitzer

  Sports, Animal, Hunting

  Albert Schweitzer (1966). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”

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• It is a mournful fact that most men, and indeed all men of worldly character, have so much regard to public opinion that they dare not act according to the dictates of their consciences when acting thus would incur the popular frown.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Character, Men, Acting

  Charles Grandison Finney, George REDFORD (D.D.) (1851). “Lectures on systematic theology, embracing moral government, the atonement, etc. Revised, enlarged, and partly re-written by the Author ... Edited ... by G. Redford”, p.455

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• There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Party, Government, Goal

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Economic freedom and interventionism: an anthology of articles and essays”

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• No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.

  Edward Bernays

  Wise, Believe, Ideas

  "Propaganda". Book by Edward Bernays, 1928.

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• Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls [are] a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind.

  Joost Meerloo

  Successful, Cells, Brain

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• We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. And those who have an interest in keeping the machinery of war going are a very powerful body; they will stop at nothing to make public opinion subservient to their murderous ends.

  Albert Einstein

  Depressing, Powerful, War

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.111, Broadway Books

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• Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

  George Orwell

  Animal, Law, Conformity

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration.

  Adam Weishaupt

  Mean, Men, Knowing

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• Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

  Alan Blinder

  Democracy, Input, Politician

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• This war is being played in the realm of public opinion and has dire consequences for our soldiers in Iraq, the future of our country, and freedom around the world.

  John Doolittle

  Country, War, Iraq

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