Opinion

"Omni autem in re consensio omnium gentium lex naturæ putanda est."

"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong."

"As the saying is, So many heades, so many wittes."

"Intolerant only of intolerance."

"It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which cannot take care of itself."

"Denique non omnes eadem mirantur amantque."

"Monuments of the safety with which errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth."

"How long halt ye between two opinions?"

"We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us."

"The deep slumber of a decided opinion."

"Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life."

"There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity."

"Il opine du bonnet comme un moine en Sorbonne."

"La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion; mais l'opinion est celle qui use de la force."

"Della opinione regina del mondo."

"He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." ["Delenda est Carthago."]"

"Some praise at morning what they blame at night, But always think the last opinion right."

"Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts."

"I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon."

"Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan The outward habit by the inward man."

"Facts are stubborn things."

""That was excellently observed," say I when I read a passage in another where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, then I pronounce him to be mistaken."

"Quot homines, tot sententiæ; suus cuique mos."

"Matters of fact, as Mr. Budgell somewhere observes, are very stubborn things."

"See, one can have an opinion about remote events, about a natural object, about nature, about scholarly works, and about another human being, and so on about much else, and when one expresses this opinion the wise person can decide whether it is correct or incorrect. No one, however, troubles the opinion-holder with a consideration of the other side of truth, whether one actually does have the opinion, whether it is just something one is reciting. Yet this other side is just as important, because not only is that person mad who talks senselessly, but the person is fully as mad who states a correct opinion if it has absolutely no significance for him. The one shows the other the confidence, the acknowledgment, of assuming that he means what he says. Alas, yet it is so easy, so very easy, to acquire a true opinion, and yet it is so difficult, so very difficult, to have an opinion and to have it in truth."

"The matter does not appear to me now as it appears to have appeared to me then."

"Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing."

"There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people; we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size."

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinions without the discomfort of thought."

"I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter—for that I have determined for myself."

"We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known."

"There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House."

"There are as many opinions as there are experts."

"After the war, and until the day of his death, his position on almost every public question was either mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both."

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately."

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."