concept

opinions Quotes

78 of the best book quotes about opinions
01
“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
02
“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”
03
“One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.”
04
“We aren’t allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn’t stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think.”
05
“But I should be false in the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”
06
“Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I had practiced not saying anything the whole way from the airport, and it was still nearly killing me.”
07
“Heresy is the foe of countenance.”
08
“I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.”
09
“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”
10
“He ought to question them upon everything, and listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions.”
11
“The first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him.”
12
“Outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt.”
13
“A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel.”
14
“A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.”
15
“you tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out i was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow i was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow”
16
“Men are no longer bound together by ideas, but by interests; and it would seem as if human opinions were reduced to a sort of intellectual dust, scattered on every side, unable to collect, unable to cohere.”
17
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
18
“There’ll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.”
19
“I be durn if it didn’t give me the creeps.”
20
“For the actions of men proceed from their opinions, and in the well governing of opinions consisteth the well governing of men’s actions in order to their peace and concord.”
21
“‘Experts, what did I tell you about experts, Peekay?’ ‘You can’t always go by expert opinion. A chicken, if you ask a chicken, should be stuffed with grasshoppers, mieles, and worms.‘”
22
“Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go ‘Over! Under! Through!’ and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.”
23
“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”
24
“To my mind, fashion is one of the wickedest things in the world.”
25
“Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.”
26
“Once you give them the power to tell you you’re great, you’ve also given them the power to tell you you’re unworthy. Once you start caring about people’s opinions of you, you give up control.”
27
″‘(A guardian ad litem is) a person trained to work with kids in the family court, who determines what’s in the child’s best interests,’ Anna recites. ‘Or in other words, just another grown-up deciding what happens to me.‘”
28
“I’m actually educated to think that morals and ethics do not necessarily go hand in hand.”
29
“Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”
30
“A major decision about me is being made, and no one’s bothered to ask the one person who most deserves it to speak her opinion.”
31
“His voice was full of a ringing authority that I had only really heard once—the night he let me into the garden. He was much more attractive when he was using his status for a purpose.”
32
“you know the old saying: it’s all a matter of taste and either they’re right and I’m wrong or I’m right and they’re all wrong or maybe it’s some place in between.”
33
“Based on her experience with men, most assumed that when you talked to them about a problem or dilemma, they were expected to offer an opinion, even when all you wanted was for them to listen.”
34
“The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?”
35
“He asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there was a difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adored self-confidence in men.”
36
“We can see from this that the soul is weak and helpless unless it clings to the firm rock of truth. Men give voice to their opinions, but they are only opinions, like so many puffs of wind that waft the soul hither and tither and make it veer and turn.”
37
“You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?”
38
“They have no knowledge of the thoughts in his mind, but they are in love with their own opinions, not because they are true, but because they are their own […] If, on the other hand, they love them because they are true, they are both theirs and mine, for they are the common property of all lovers of the truth.”
39
“The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.”
40
“Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them.”
41
“The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are, generally, easily influenced by the ‘opinions’ of others.”
42
“To sift all of the opinions would be perhaps rather a fruitless task; so it shall suffice to sift those which are most generally current, or are thought to have some reason in them.”
43
“In his work itself, especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in which it would be presented on paper only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter, while above all observing every prescribed formality.”
44
“It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.”
45
“All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions. These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in and of itself, its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.”
46
“There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics”
47
“You can’t exist in this world with such strong likes and dislikes.”
48
“A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.”
49
“To give a person one’s opinion and correct his faults is an important thing. It is compassionate and comes first in matters of service.”
50
“It was a friendship founded on many common tastes and interests, on mutual like and admiration of each for what the other was, and an attitude of respect which allowed unhampered expression of opinion even on those rare subjects which aroused differences of views and of belief. It was, therefore, the kind of friendship that can exist only between two men.”
51
“The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high-- whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward-- that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives-- professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values-- indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.”
52
“When people are feeling friendly and placable, they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally different or the same thing with a different intensity.”
53
“People always get fired up when an unattractive girl and an unattractive dude are dating each other.”
54
“While I agree that I’ve never seen a kiwi bird fly, I disagree with the statement that they can’t fly. How do we know? Couldn’t it just be that they choose not to? You’ll never see me running, but there’s a good chance I could.”
55
“It was against the rules to remain indifferent to it.”
56
“It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.”
57
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of the opinion is, that it is robbing the human race.”
58
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”
59
“Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.”
60
“The worst offense of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.”
61
“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; ”
62
“Oh, Myrtle you’ve got so much to offer. I don’t care what anyone says, there’s something sweet about every young girl.”
book
characters
63
“Welcome to BigMistake.com Population: untold million.”
64
“In this world, Elwood, you must be oh-so-smart or -oh-so-pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.”
book
character
65
“Miss Kelly, you know, when you wear my flower you make it beautiful.”
66
“As to that, sir, I swore an oath before the altar of God to protect this woman. And if you’re tellin’ me that ye consider your own authority to be greater that that of the Almighty, then I must inform ye that I’m no of that opinion, myself.”
67
“Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What d’you think?”
68
“Depressed” is a word that often describes somebody who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you.”
69
“The next day my mother dragged Fudge to Dr. Cone’s office. He told her to leave him alone. That Fudge would eat when he got hungry. I reminded my mother that I’d told her the same thing—and for free. But I guess my mother didn’t believe either one of us because she took Fudge to see three more doctors.”
70
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
71
“Unfortunately, when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right.”
72
“It means the right to have our own opinions. Human problems aren’t like mathematics, Nat. Every problem doesn’t have just one answer; sometimes you get several answers—and you don’t know which is the right one.”
73
“In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.”
74
“Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in our own.”
75
“I hope as you get your elths in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,” said Joe, confidentially, “and I believe its character do stand it; but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him.”
Source: Chapter 27, Paragraph 28
76
She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.
Source: Chapter 1, Paragraph 1104
77
“I should not have supposed that my opinion of any one could have admitted of such difference of conjecture, steady and matter of fact as I may call myself.”
Source: Chapter 14, Paragraph 20
78
“And when he does, Mary, you may depend upon hearing my opinion; but I am determined not to judge him beforehand.”
Source: Chapter 14, Paragraph 20

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