“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?”

“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.”

“Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.”

“In Paris the rich encounter wit ready-made, pre-digested science, and opinions already formulated, which excuse them from hand to have wit, science or opinion.”

“I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality… he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without…”

“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.”

“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.”

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”

“Few men think; yet all have opinions.”

“Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.”