“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

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Henry David Thoreau385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden and Other Writings

“What is public opinion? It is private indolence.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 9

“The most difficult secret for a man to keep is his own opinion of himself.”

Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France

“Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Source: Against Method (1975), p. 46.

“The tolerant man has decided opinions, but recognises the process by which he reaches them, and keeps before himself the truth that they can only be profitably spread by repeating in the case of others a similar process to that through which he passed himself. He always keeps in view the hope of spreading his own opinions, but he endeavours to do so by producing conviction. He is virtuous, not because he puts his own opinions out of sight, nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own, but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not anyone else hold them with less reality”

Mandell Creighton (1843–1901) English historian and ecclesiastic

Persecution and Tolerance, Hulsean Lectures, University of Cambridge (Winter 1893–94)

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“There is a power in public opinion in this country- and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers- which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

As quoted by William A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1984) p. 133

“there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Art of Always Being Right

“You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

“All Governments rest mainly on public opinion, and to that of his own subjects every wise Sovereign will look. The opinion of his subjects will force a Sovereign to do his duty, and by that opinion will he be exalted or depressed in the politics of the world.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Trial of John Vint and others (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 640.

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

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Henry David Thoreau385

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