“Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.”
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)
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Karl Kraus 94
Czech playwright and publicist 1874–1936Related quotes
“Sound opinion is not the exclusive prerogative of those who are paid to give it.”
Overture to Overlord (1950), p. 51
Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Editorial written in remembrance of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.
Context: The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.
“The prejudiced and obstinate man does not so much hold opinions, as his opinions hold him.”
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 438.
Carleton (1885) City Ballads, p. 143. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
"The Importance of Critical Discussion" in On the Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict (1989) by Robert Basil
Context: There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. … It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
“Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.”
Plato, Republic, 506c
Plato, Republic
On the placement of microphones in the production of the album Zoom, in "An Electric return for Jeff Lynne" at CNN (3 September 2001) http://archives.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/jeff.lynne/
“I'm ready. They hit me hard. I hit them hard. Doesn't matter who hits. What matters is results.”
Steve Schrader (April 13, 2008) "What the NBC microphones picked up: Predator taunting", Detroit Free Press.