Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

Fly no opinion because it is new, but strictly search, and after careful view, reject it if false, embrace it if 'tis true.

Opinion | Search | Wisdom |

Donn Piatt

There is no tyranny so despotic as that of public opinion among a free people.

Opinion | People | Public | Tyranny | Wisdom |

Robert Peel, fully Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet

Public opinion is compounded by folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

Folly | Opinion | Prejudice | Public | Right | Weakness | Wisdom | Wrong |

Alexander Pope

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against providence.

Opinion | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |

Tomochichi NULL

The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized societies.

Men | Opinion | Wisdom |

John Weiss

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and of detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

Observation | Opinion | Rule | Wisdom |

Charles Dudley Warner

Public opinion is stronger than the Legislature, and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments.

Opinion | Public | Wisdom |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

All our distinctions are accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it is so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.

Beauty | Censure | Mankind | Opinion | Praise | Qualities | Responsibility | Wisdom | Beauty |

Edward Hallet "Ted" Carr

The most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts.

Influence | Opinion |

Albert Einstein

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem – in my opinion – to characterize our age.

Age | Goals | Means | Opinion | Perfection |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many.

God | Machines | Opinion | Power | Science | Words | God |

Mark Hertsgaard

How a report is framed, which facts it contains and emphasizes and which it ignores, and in what context, are as important to sharing opinion as the bare facts themselves.

Important | Opinion |

B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell

Be very careful never to show your own bias to anyone who is giving you information, or passing it on to you. Once he sees that you have a particular inclination he will instinctively tend to tell you what he thinks will suit you, and enhance your opinion of him.

Giving | Inclination | Opinion | Will |

Herman Hesse

Nothing makes the multitude angrier than when someone forces them to change their opinion of him.

Change | Nothing | Opinion |

William James

The truth of God has to run the gauntlet of all other truths. It is on trial by them and they on trial by it. Our final opinion about God can be settled only after all the truths have straightened themselves out together.

God | Opinion | Truth | Trial | God | Truths |

Thomas Jefferson

If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinion as much as is opposed.

Courage | Men | Opinion | Thinking | Think |

Thomas Jefferson

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Error | Opinion | Reason |