...it
does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an
irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's
minds...
-- Samuel Adams
Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion
and public debate, and where no opportunity for
the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods…but
no opinion.
-- Hannah Arendt
|
|
I
believe if a private citizen is able to affect public
opinion in a constructive way
he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform
a public service.
-- Warren Beatty
“There
is nothing that makes more cowards
and feeble men than public opinion”
-- Henry Ward
Beecher
|
|
“A
public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”
-- Warren Buffett
“A
wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows
public opinion”
-- Chinese Proverb
“A
state that denies its citizens their basic rights
becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal
arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external
relations. The suppression of public opinion, the
abolition of public competition for power and its
public exercise opens the way for the state power
to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that
does not hesitate to lie to its own people will
not hesitate to lie to other states.”
-- Vaclav Havel
|
 |
It
is not at all clear how much the media influences public
opinion
and how much public opinion influences the media.
-- Bruce Jackson
Public
opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress
of human affairs.
-- Frank B. Kellogg
I believe that in the end the abolition of war, the
maintenance of world peace, the adjustment of international
questions by pacific means will come through the force
of public opinion, which controls nations and peoples.
-- Frank B. Kellogg
|
|
*
The big powers are traveling on the dangerous
road of armament. The signpost just ahead of us
is 'Oblivion.' Can the march on this road be stopped?
Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has.
-- Sean MacBride
|
Public
opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice,
wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper
paragraphs.
-- Robert Peel
|
Law
is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm,
living public opinion.
-- Wendell Phillips
|
|
A
wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows
the public opinion.
-- Grantland Rice
You can't move so fast that you try to change
the mores faster than people can accept it.
That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means
that you do the things that need to be done
according to priority.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
|
|
 |
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
|
 |
One should respect public opinion insofar as is
necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of
prison, but anything that goes beyond this is
voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-- Bertrand
Russell
|
|
If we were to convince society to strive towards
creating a better world, we would address all
of the problems that endanger our future.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein
When
we convince the people and the nations of our
planet to make 'striving for a better world' our
priority and shared goal, we will transform our
culture of fear and violence into a 'culture of
peace and sustainability.'
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
|
 |
 |
It
is sufficient that people should understand that
what is enunciated to them as public opinion, and
maintained by such complex, energetic, and artificial
means, is not public opinion, but only the lifeless
outcome of what was once public opinion; and, what
is more important, it is sufficient that they should
have faith in themselves, that they should believe
that what they are conscious of in the depths of
their souls, what in every one is pressing for expression,
and is only not expressed because it contradicts
the public opinion supposed to exist, is the power
which transforms the world, and to express which
is the mission of mankind...
-- Leo Tolstoy
|
