Quotes About Public Opinion

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.”
― Paulo Coelho

“You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.”
― Jon Stewart

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
― Adolf Hitler

“Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.”
― H.L. Mencken

“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
― H.L. Mencken, Gist of Mencken

“If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

“Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

“Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues."

[Stage direction, Henry IV, Part 2, Induction]”
― William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

“Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”
― Nicolas Chamfort

“Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.”
― Roberto Bolaño

“In one survey, respondents listed Princeton as one of the country’s top ten law schools. The problem? Princeton doesn’t have a law school”
― Alexandra Robbins

“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore,
Are what ten thousand envy and adore:
All, all look up, with reverential Awe,
At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law:
While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry-`
'Nothing is sacred now but Villainy'

- Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I”
― Alexander Pope

“The COUNTRY is controlled by LAWS>
LAWS are controlled by POLITICIANS>
POLITICIANS are controlled by VOTERS>
VOTERS are controlled by PUBLIC OPINION>
PUBLIC OPINION is controlled by the MEDIA (News, Hollywood, Internet...) & EDUCATION

so. whoever controls MEDIA & EDUCATION, controls the COUNTRY.”
― William J Federer, Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I have always tried to be obedient regarding important matters like not being scalded to death by burning oil, but when public opinion takes a route far from one's inner conviction, one cannot value disobedience too highly.”
― Barbara Dana, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson

“We saw a pale echo of what is now possible in 1990-1991, when Saddam Hussein, the autocrat of Iraq, made a sudden transition in the American consciousness from an obscure near-ally - granted commodities, high technology, weaponry, and even satellite intelligence data - to a slavering monster menacing the world. I am not myself an admirer of Mr. Hussein, but it was striking how quickly he could be brought from someone almost no American had heard of into the incarnation of evil. These days the apparatus for generating indignation is busy elsewhere. How confident are we that the power to drive and determine public opinion will always reside in responsible hands?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.”
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

“I won't ask you to tell me who has spoken ill of me, but I would like to know who has spoken favorably.”
― Santiago Roncagliolo, Abril rojo

“Vox populi, vox Humbug.”
― William T. Sherman

“The aid agencies are not run by fools. they are full of intelligent people severely constrained by what public opinion permits.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It