This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion - it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end. though you can render no reason." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every opinion reacts on him who utters it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all one pattern. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is not truth, but opinion, that can travel the world without a passport." - Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh
"The heart of Religion is not an opinion about God, such as philosophy might reach as the conclusion of an argument; it is a personal relation with God." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because there is a subject or mind; and the mind is a subject because there are objects. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality; the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an
"Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an innate resistance to innovation." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen
"Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Our own opinion of ourselves should be lower than that formed by others, for we have a better chance at our imperfections." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken
"The highest and most profitable learning is the knowledge of ourselves. To have a low opinion of our own merits, and to think highly of others, is an evidence of wisdom. All men are frail, but thou shouldst reckon none so frail as thyself." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken
"Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it a real pleasure to be brought into communication with anyone who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions according to their greater or lesser conformity." - Thomas Arnold
"Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world." - Thomas Carlyle
"Happiness generally depends more on the opinion we have of Things, than on the Things themselves." - Thomas Fuller
"Popular Opinion is the greatest Lie in the World." - Thomas Fuller
"What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Prejudice is opinion without judgment." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors[crimes]." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator." - Wendell Phillips
"Society - the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world’s university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye." - Wendell Phillips
"All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct." - William Butler Yeats
"Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it." - William Hazlitt
"Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves." - William Hazlitt
"The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do it he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him." - William Hazlitt
"The secret of our self-love is just the same as that of our liberality and candor. Wee prefer ourselves to others only because we have a more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person’s." - William Hazlitt
"People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking." - William Hazlitt
"Public opinion is a second conscience." - William Rounseville Alger
"Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms." - William Rounseville Alger
"The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the doubtfulness of all our beliefs. If we certainly knew the truth, there would be something to be said for teaching it. But in that case it could be taught without invoking authority, by means of its inherent reasonableness. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"When I look at the stars and realize that the light from some of these suns takes a million years to reach my eyes, I realize how tiny and insignificant this earth is, and how microscopic and evanescent are my own little troubles. I will pass on soon; but the sea stretching for a thousand miles in all directions and the stars and the spiral nebulae swarming through illimitable space above, they will continue for millions of years. I marvel that any man looking up at the stars can have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance. " - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!" - Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
"So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public." - Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
"That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment. " - Doris Kearns Goodwin, born Doris Helen Kearns