P Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with P. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Public officials are all right if they stay in their proper sphere and perform their proper functions but when they get greedy for wider scope and more power and money they lose their value and become parasites.”
“Public opinion actually applauds the young woman venturing into the business world, but it still obstinately (and quite illogically) protects the young man in his sacred right to know nothing of housework.”
Source: Crystal Eastman on women and revolution
“Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.”
Source: The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi
“Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates.”
“Public opinion aside, it will be up to the future pope to continue John Paul II's journey to sainthood. Many of the late pope's followers believe he is already there.”
“Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.”
“Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.”
Source: Hegel's Philosophy of right
“Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)
“Public opinion has been evolving nationwide when it comes to marijuana policy, and Californians have always been ahead of the curve.”
“Public opinion! I don't know how sociologists define it, but it seems obvious to me that it can only consist of interacting individual opinions, freely expressed and independent of government or party opinion.
So long as there is no independent public opinion in our country, there is no guarantee that the extermination of millions and millions for no good reason will not happen again, that it will not begin any night—perhaps this very night.”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII
“Public opinion in Egypt is very antagonistic to the way the dictatorship, Mubarak dictatorship, interpreted relations with Israel. Very antagonistic.”
“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavored and colored, and put into cans.”
Source: Notes On Democracy
“Public opinion in the United States has shifted significantly, not just outside but also within the Jewish community.”
“Public opinion in this country is everything.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46
“Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.”
“Public opinion is a courtesan, whom we seek to please without respecting.”
“Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.”
“Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.”
“Public opinion is a second conscience.”
“Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
“Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.”
Source: Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend
“Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.”
Source: Prince Lucifer
“Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].”
“Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.”
Source: My Summer in a Garden: Easyread Large Edition
“Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.”
Source: The Solitudes of Nature and of Man, Or, The Loneliness of Human Life
“Public opinion is the judgment of the incapable many opposed to that of the discerning few.”
Source: Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work
“Public opinion is the last refuge of a politician without any opinion.”
“Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.”
“Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.”
Source: Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut
“Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”
Source: Chamfort maxims: anecdotes, personalities, letters, historical writings, etc
“Public opinion is to an unconventional idea … what abortion is to sperm.”
Source: The Confessions of a Misfit
“Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.”
“Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation.”
“Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns amongst the stupid.”
“Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.”
Source: 1829-1836
“Public opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress of human affairs.”
“Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.”
“Public opinion takes no offense at the endeavors of farmers, workers, clerks, teachers, doctors, ministers, and people from many other callings to earn as much as they can. But it censures the capitalists and entrepreneurs for their greed.”
Source: Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses
“Public opinion which, to be sure, can at times be helpful, must never for an instant swerve us from what we know in our heart we are trying to convey. For honesty is the great requisite of art. If we remain honest with ourselves, art, which is always there, never lets us down.”
“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly [...] All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”
“Public opinion wins wars.”
“Public opinion's always in advance of the law.”
Source: 25 Plays
“Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.”
“Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and colored and put into cans.”
“Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics.”
Source: American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition
“public opinion, the sum of private opinions, does matter, can matter often for good.”
Source: A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error
“Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities...”
“Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.”
“Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.”
Source: The View From The Ground