"Government is being founded on opinion, the..." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson
Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.
More by Thomas Jefferson
More on Government
“A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.”
“Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors?”
“The US Airforce assures me that UFO's pose no threat to National Security.”
More on Public Opinion
“Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.”
“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.”
“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.”