Public Opinion Quotes

“Eight days ago, we were the toast of the town. Eight days later we're Thanksgiving turkeys.”

“I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

“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.”

“The virtue in most request is conformity.”

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

“Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government?”

“The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.”

“I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.”

“The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.”

“Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.”

“Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.”

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

“The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.”

“People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance.”

“You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.”

“The only thing I can't control is the spin in the press. And so if I know I can't control that, I have to let it go.”

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

“It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.”

“You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

“What does calling this medical care legislation "historic" mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.”