“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
Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 9
“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
“To create a public scandal is what's wicked;
To sin in private is not a sin.”
Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense,
Et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence.
Act IV, sc. v
Tartuffe (1664)
“Public opinion is no more than this,
What people think that other people think.”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet
Prince Lucifer (1887), Lucifer in Act VI, sc. ii; p. 189.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Letter to Ottoline Morrell, January 30, 1916
1910s
Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations
Wenn man mit Recht vom Faulen sagt, er töte die Zeit, so muß man von einer Periode, welche ihr Heil auf die öffentlichen Meinungen, das heißt auf die privaten Faulheiten setzt, ernstlich besorgen, daß eine solche Zeit wirklich einmal getötet wird: ich meine, daß sie aus der Geschichte der wahrhaften Befreiung des Lebens gestrichen wird. Wie groß muß der Widerwille späterer Geschlechter sein, sich mit der Hinterlassenschaft jener Periode zu befassen, in welcher nicht die lebendigen Menschen, sondern öffentlich meinende Scheinmenschen regierten.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician
"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)
Jeff Bezos (1964) American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future - CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-jeff-bezos-looks-to-the-future/.
Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 97
Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician
Speech to the Oxford Carlton Club (3 March 1922), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour, 1920-1924: The Beginnings of Modern British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 147.
1920s