This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
What is thought to be the responsible public opinion is, at any given time, a reflection of the needs and interests of the corporate technostructure.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, it would be an evil still.
The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it.
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
Though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; an since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Protection against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
Conduct | Dissent | Enough | Ideas | Means | Opinion | Society | Tyranny | Society |
For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.
Because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. that so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
Character | Courage | Danger | Eccentricity | Genius | Opinion | Order | People | Society | Strength | Time | Tyranny | Society | Danger |
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
Behavior | Care | Conduct | Heart | Man | Mind | Opinion | Public | World |
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
Opinion |
On every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.
What hurt him most was his outrageous opinion of his own worth.
The most difficult secret for a man to keep is the opinion he has of himself.