Winston Churchill
Politician, Writer, Historian
"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."
Public Opinion quotes
Public Opinion
210 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Bertrand Russell
Philosopher, Mathematician
"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
Politician, Founding Father
"If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism."
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Politician
"Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government."
Gore Vidal
Writer, Essayist, Playwright
"At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside public opinion — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Public Opinion quotes (page 1 of 11)
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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."
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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."
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"No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform."
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"Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation"
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"Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion."
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"Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law."
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"The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion."
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"Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine."
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"Creation of effective public opinion depends on the cultivation of true courage, born of truthfulness and nonviolence."
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"A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it."
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"Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'."
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"Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult."
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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.)"
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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."
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"Sound conviction should influence us rather than public opinion."
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"Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them."
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"Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice."
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"What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment."
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"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground."
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"The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world."
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