Public Opinion Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Learning, Popular Vote, Law

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.195, University of Georgia Press

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• In the long run, much public opinion is made in the universities; ideas generated there filter down through the teaching profession and the students into the general public.

  B. Carroll Reece

  Running, Teaching, Ideas

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• We have hardly an adequate idea how all-powerful law is in forming public opinion, in giving tone and character to the mass of society.

  Ernestine Rose

  Powerful, Character, Law

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• The chief cause of unhappiness in married life is that people think that marriage is sex attraction, which takes the form of promises and hopes and happiness - a view supported by public opinion and by literature. But marriage cannot cause happiness. Instead, it is always torture, which man has to pay for satisfying his sex urge.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Marriage, Sex, Men

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• Public opinion has been evolving nationwide when it comes to marijuana policy, and Californians have always been ahead of the curve.

  Rob Kampia

  Marijuana, Curves, Californians

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• The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Struggle, Resistance, Despotism

  Ludwig von Mises (1985). “Theory and History”, p.66, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion

  Nicolas Gomez Davila

  Echoes, Opinion, Contrary

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• The World War broke out with such elemental violence, and with such resort to all means for leading or misleading public opinion, that no time was available for reflection and consideration

  Hjalmar Branting

  War, Mean, Reflection

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• Only fools, pure theorists, or apprentices fail to take public opinion into account.

  Jacques Necker

  Fool, Failing, Accounts

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• 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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• Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature.

  Elif Batuman

  Book, Secret, Pseudonyms

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• Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

  Albert J. Nock

  Useless, Sound, Force

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• Absolute truth is not dependent upon public opinion or popularity. Now what is this truth? It is His gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Jesus, Christ, Truth Is

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