“At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.”
"Sex and the Law," Partisan Review (Summer 1965)
1970s, Homage to Daniel Shays : Collected Essays (1972)
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes

Letter to her sister Elle (1923); later published in Letters from Africa: 1914-1931 (1981) edited by Frans Lasson, translated by Anne Born.

“We now have access to so much information that we can find support for any prejudice or opinion.”
What a difference 50 years makes, davidsuzuki.org, 2008-06-27 http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly06270801.asp,

“Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.”
Le préjugé est une opinion sans jugement.
"Prejudices" (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

“An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment.”
"In Defense of Self-Defense" (20 June 1967)

"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic (September/October 1946) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift
Context: In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

“Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.”
Source: The Realm of Possibility