Public Opinion Quotes

People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don't make any economic sense.

My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.

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.

It's not our job to make people like us if they don't.

The little I am exposed to hurts my feelings. The only things I can really control are my songs and my behavior. The rest? If I focused on it, that would lead to insanity.

The public doesn't mind people living together without being married, providing they don't overdo it.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles-or who are looked upon with scorn as compromising "politicians"-are simply engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and enabling our Government to function.

In war, the moral element and public opinion are half the battle.

You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether or not the relativity theory is correct.

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.

Men as a whole judge more with their eyes than with their hands.

I just kind of live a life, and I let all the gossip live somewhere else. If you go too far down the rabbit hole of what people think about you, it can change everything about who you are.

If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership -- you are practicing followership.

I have more fans and more followers and more supporters. Because the people who actually saw the Joe Frazier Muhammad Ali fight, they saw me win at least nine rounds - the people who know boxing.

It doesn’t faze me what anyone says about me. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about me. I’m a totally different entity to what other people think. Michael and Tyson are two different people. I’m Tyson here.

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.

By gaining the people, the kingdom is gained; by losing the people, the kingdom is lost.

I think the average person thinks I'm a nut and I deserve whatever happens to me.

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion.

In Missouri, it's a 50/50 state, so I'm kind of used to half the state being mad at me.

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.

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.

People are tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers, and they are angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who think all of mankind's problems can be solved by throwing the taxpayers dollars at them.

One of the things that you learn, having been in this [President's] office for four years, is the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's. That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done.

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.

I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the [president electing] campaign.

I know the American people. I've met a lot of them. I've met a lot more of them than any columnist has, or any talking head on TV has. And they're pretty sophisticated.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that's happening to me, and some days I feel everyone's waiting for me to mess up.

Everybody gon' say something. I'd be worried if they said nothing.

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

The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

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

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

One of the tricks of the west is to use or create images, they create images of a person who doesn't go along with their views and then they make certain that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say from thereon, from thereon in, is rejected.

If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Thou knowest how numerous this tribe is, how united and how powerful in the assemblies. I will plead in a low voice so that only the judges may hear, for instigators are not lacking to stir up the crowd against me, and against all the best citizens. To scorn, in the interest of the Republic, this multitude of Jews so often turbulent in the assemblies shows a singular strength of mind. The money is in the Treasury; they do not accuse us of theft; they seek to stir up hatreds.

As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public.

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

If you tell most people what libertarians think, they immediately assume that you cannot mean it all the way, that you're really just taking a position for argument's sake.

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn't elect those people. Isn't it supposed to be different? Aren't we supposed to like the people that we elected?

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 mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

People are going to say what they say. I know sometimes I say things; I offend people.

Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

He who dies before many witnesses always does so with courage.

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.

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.

Public opinion is the judgment of the incapable many opposed to that of the discerning few.

In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude. Every man will speak as he thinks, or, more properly, without thinking, and consequently will judge of effects without attending to their causes.

To attach no importance to public opinion, is a proof that you do not merit its suffrage.

Illness and fatigue can be career ending. It mean the fans are sick and tired of you.