Public Opinion Quotes

“After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

“How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.”

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.”

“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.”

“Millions who could not follow closely or accurately the main events of the War looked day after day in the papers for the fortunes of Mafeking, and when finally the news of its relief was flashed throughout the world, the streets of London became impassable, and the floods of sterling, cockney patriotism were released in such a deluge of unbridled, delirious joy as was never witnessed again till Armistace Night, 1918.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.”

“Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.”

“The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.”

“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure.”

“The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.”

“Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.”

“The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.”

“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”

“Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate committee appointed to look into it.”

“There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”

“People who are not prepared to do unpopular things and defy the clamor of the multitude are not fit to be ministers in time of difficulty.”

“The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open.”

“The press is easier to strangle than to look in the eyes.”

“When one is in office one has no idea how damnable things can feel to the ordinary rank and file of the public.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“Politicians, after all, are not over a year behind public opinion.”

“It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.”

“All think what other people think;All know the man their neighbor knows.Lord, what would they sayDid their Catullus walk that way?”

“Our president delivered his State of the Union message to Congress. That is one of the things his contract calls for -- to tell congress the condition of the country. This message, as I say, is to Congress. The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the president has to tell 'em.”