169 Public opinion Quotes

The reading public isn't born that doesn't think foreigners are either funny or faintly sinister.

The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.

The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.

If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it's much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems.

Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

Fritzsche, radio propaganda chief, by manipulation of the truth goaded German public opinion into frenzied support of the regime and anesthetized the independent judgment of the population so that they did without question their masters' bidding.

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.

Our country will, I believe, sooner forgive an officer for attacking an enemy than for letting it alone.

The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events - some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled.

The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy.

For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment - the sober second thought - of the people.

Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.

Everyone now, they look back and they're like, 'What happened to your sweet image that you used to be?' And I'm like, then when you came out you thought I was too provocative. It's like you can never win. No matter what you do, at the end of the day you can't please everybody, you know. I'm not here to please...

I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man - public opinion.

'Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.'

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.

Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.

The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.

Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so.' Some said, 'It might do good;' others said, 'No.'

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

How could US leaders promote democracy in principle? They are opposed to it within the US, for obvious reasons [...] for example: the sharp divergence between public opinion and the policies they implement. Sometimes the visceral hatred of democracy becomes so dramatic that it takes real talent to miss it, as in the New-Old Europe farce of the past few years. The distinguishing criterion is very precise: Old Europe, the bad guys to be reviled, are the governments that took the same position as the large majority of their populations; New Europe, the grand hope for democracy, are the governments that overruled an even larger majority of their populations and took their orders from Crawford Texas. Really impressive discipline was required to 'miss it,' and even more, to identify Paul Wolfowitz as the 'idealist in chief' whose 'passion for democracy' brings tears to one's eyes -- as illustrated, for example, by his bitter denunciation of the Turkish military in 2003 for not compelling the government to overrule the will of 95% of the population and follow Washington's orders.

It is tempting to follow a policy of malign neglect toward Chomsky's latest screed. But ignoring the book may foster the false impression that Chomsky's revelations are somehow too explosive to be challenged in a major newspaper. A far wiser course is to point out the inconsistent arguments and shrill assertions that are Chomsky's contribution to the public debate. [...] It would be unfortunate if Chomsky's momentary popularity overshadows infinitely more reasoned critiques of Bush administration policies. There are serious questions that should be weighed as America girds for final war against Saddam Hussein and dispatches military advisers to nations like the Philippines. Chomsky and his camp followers do not have a monopoly on dissent. The best response to the frenzied e-mailed dispatches from this left-wing crank remains public disclosure and ridicule. --Walter Shapiro, May 7, 2002 [218]

Now, this is an illustration. I just asked you: What in this country are you proud of, versus 30, 40 years ago what we were proud of? We were proud of all of this. We were puffed up with pride about all of this! We were proud of our achievements. We were proud of our accomplishments. We were appreciative of our freedom. But now look at what they've made us hate. Look at what they've made us detest. Look at the absolute BS that they have more and more educated people believing - that, oil is just a conspiracy, that there is a replacement. 'There's alternative fuels out there, but they don't want to release 'em because Big Oil and big Republicans and Halliburton, Cheney, Bush. They're all in a conspiracy to keep it from threatening their own investments in oil.' Is it not shocking, ladies and gentlemen, to realize just how few educated Americans understand how the world works? More than that, isn't it scary to understand how few educated Americans understand how their own country works?

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

What a jolly awakening there will be some few years hence, when the inevitable argument of experience will show us a nation contradicting itself through the voices of its chosen representatives! The stupidest politician will sit up, rubbing his eyes. After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, 'Lies - damned lies - and statistics,' still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of. So we may be led to the serious consideration of change by the evolution of materials of conviction which those who run may read, though some who read may wish to run away from them.

Was there no resistance to his disastrous projects? There was. But it was too feeble, too weak and too late to succeed.... The fact is that Hitler was beloved by his people - not the military, at least not in the beginning, but by the average Germans who pledged to him an affection, a tenderness and a fidelity that bordered on the irrational. ... Winston Churchill was the only man of state who unmasked Hitler immediately and refused to let himself be duped by Hitler's repeated promises that this time he was making his 'last territorial demand.' ... In his own 'logic,' Hitler was persuaded for a fairly long time that the German and British people had every reason to get along and divide up spheres of influence throughout the world. He did not understand British obstinacy in its resistance to his racial philosophy and to the practical ends it engendered. ... After Rommel's defeat in North Africa, after the debacle at Stalingrad and even when the landings in Normandy were imminent, Hitler and his entourage still had the mind to come up with the Final Solution. In his testament, drafted in a underground bunker just hours before his suicide in Berlin, Hitler returns again to this hatred of the Jewish people that had never left him. But in the same testament, he settles his score with the German people. He wants them to be sacked, destroyed, reduced to misery and shame for having failed him by denying him his glory. The former corporal become commander in chief of all his armies and convinced of his strategic and political genius was not prepared to recognize his own responsibility for the defeat of his Reich.

There has never been a just one, never an honorable one -- on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object -- at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -- as earlier -- but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy. The ignorant and innocent masses in each country are unaware at the time that they are being misled, and when it is all over only here and there are the falsehoods discovered and exposed. As it is all past history and the desired effect has been produced by the stories and statements, no one troubles to investigate the facts and establish the truth.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.

Ordinary people abroad take a better attitude toward men who come as guests with their wives. And if they are accompanied by other members of their family, that disposes people even more favorably toward them. Therefore, I would propose that Khrushchev take Nina Petrovna with him and also include in the delegation other members of his family. This will be well received by ordinary Americans, and that would be better for us.

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.

It has been said that the people of this country are deeply interested in the humanitarian and philanthropic considerations involved in [the Eastern Question]. All must appreciate such feelings. But I am mistaken if there be not a yet deeper sentiment on the part of the people of this country, one with which I cannot doubt your lordships will ever sympathise, and that is-the determination to maintain the Empire of England.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

'It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency.'

I don't have to stand here and defend the campaign of 1988. I'd be perfectly prepared to do it, but I was elected. I put confidence in the American people, their ability to sort through what is fair and what is unfair, what is ugly and what is un-ugly, and be as positive as possible.

The invisible thing called a Good Name is made up of the breath of numbers that speak well of you.

The people are never so perfectly backed, but that they will kick and fling if not stroked at seasonable times.

Consensus politics means that you cannot afford to give the many-headed beast, the public, anything to vote against, for voting against is what gargantuan pseudodemocracy has to come down to.

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms.

The extreme limit of wisdom - that's what the public calls madness.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be...

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

The demands of a free populace, too, are very seldom harmful to liberty, for they are due either to the populace being oppressed or to the suspicious that it is going to be oppressed... and, should these impressions be false, a remedy is provided in the public platform on which some man of standing can get up, appeal to the crowd, and show that it is mistaken. And though, as Tully remarks, the populace may be ignorant, it is capable of grasping the truth and readily yields when a man, worthy of confidence, lays the truth before it.

People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning.

Are we out of step with the administration because we do not comport completely to their political point of view?... So they criticize us for it. It goes with the territory, and if we get a groundswell we begin to look at ourselves.

I think sometimes in the establishment that there are a lot of people in America who resent the establishment, who resent the elite universities, who resent the large corporations and with some good reason this year - as we discovered - and who feel and who have felt prior to the advent of this sort of a great involvement of talk radio that they haven't had place to debate or even vent. And so, is Rush a deeply serious analyst and commentator? In some respects. Is he a showman as well? I think the answer is yes. But I'd never argue that he doesn't have place on the menu.

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

'We cannot rule out the possibility that many citizens will join the march because of widespread promotion and mobilization these days... we cannot rule out the possibility that some citizens may join it as a kind of activity because it's a holiday... we should not think that many people taking to the street will necessarily mean they are against Article 23.' --Regina Ip responding to reporters' question on her views on the July 1 protest, June 29, 2003.

It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height. So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.

The constant refrain that bringing our troops home would demonstrate a lack of support for them must be one of the most amazing distortions ever foisted on the American public.

He really lit my fuse when he continued to assert that it was our fault we were attacked on Sept. 11 ... [Ron Paul's comments were] ludicrous and unacceptable.

What he's done -- what his supporters have done -- is astonishing... You can't dismiss the power of one man standing up with a powerful message... Washington insiders don't know what to make of it.'

He doesn't strike me as the kind of person that's tapping into those elements of American public opinion that might lead towards a sustainable move in the libertarian direction.

The idea of a liberal elite is not intellectually robust. It's never been enunciated with anything approaching scholarly rigor, it has been refuted countless times, and it falls apart under any sort of systematic scrutiny. Yet the idea persists. It did not die with Richard Nixon or peter out with the busing controversy or depart the national scene with the wily Bill Clinton. Indeed, it has greater currency on the street today than do twenty years' worth of blue-ribbon studies and a lifetime of responsible sociology.

A Government which has decided on embarking on the hazardous and terrible enterprise of war must at the outset present a one-sided case in justification of its action, and cannot afford to admit in any particular whatever the smallest degree of right or reason on the part of the people it has made up its mind to fight. Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed, and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question. A moment's reflection would tell any reasonable person that such obvious bias cannot possibly represent the truth. But the moment's reflection is not allowed; lies are circulated with great rapidity. The unthinking mass accept them and by their excitement sway the rest. The amount of rubbish and humbug that pass under the name of patriotism in war-time in all countries is sufficient to make decent people blush when they are subsequently disillusioned.

...he is arguing for and in fact defending the 9/11 terrorist attack, by finding a plethora of faults in our foreign policy, and in the way we handle the war on terror here in the home front and in the Middle East which he believed justified the terrorists' attacks killing thousands of innocent Americans... If we examine the reactions of pro-Paul haters of America to the published article I have mentioned, we find no brain, only emotional kicks... Another fan of Paul thought Paul was the smartest candidate because unlike the other candidates, to defeat the enemy, he wants to study and know first the enemy. No, talking of who is smart and who is not, he is not even a shadow of his nemesis Rudy Giuliani. A scatterbrain does not compare to Giuliani who is surging ahead in the polls without looking back. Sorry to disappoint a rabid fan... Paul claims to be the only enforcer of the U.S. Constitution. His followers are duped into believing that he is. He is not - he is a defiler if not a violator of the Constitution... Note that under this Act, our financial obligations to the UN, the sending of troops to troubled spots in the world at the call of the UN are, among others, mandated by the Constitution... My initial advice to him at this distance and I hope his handful of followers will get it too is, don't be a glutton for public scorn even if you thirst for public accolade as champion of the taxpayers by attacking the United Nations in violation of the Constitution. It does not make a hell of sense.