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There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion. -- Winston Churchill
Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. -- Oscar Wilde
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence. -- Walter Lippmann
Wonderful Force of Public Opinion! We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of influence it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front? -- Thomas Carlyle
Public opinion in this country is everything. -- Abraham Lincoln
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion. -- Thomas Huxley
Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion. -- Vincent Van Gogh
A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion. -- Grantland Rice
Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs. -- Robert Peel
Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities ... -- H. P. Blavatsky
The Reform Bill has destroyed the ancient conduits and strainers, and brings Public Opinion to act upon the government with the rapid, turbulent, and uncertain violence of a flood! -- Robert Peel
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. -- Walter Bagehot
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. -- Bertrand Russell
Public opinion is the worst of all opinions. -- Nicolas Chamfort
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought. -- Warren Buffett
For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion. -- Henry Ward Beecher
American public opinion is like an ocean, it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon. -- Hubert H. Humphrey
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. -- Samuel Johnson
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom. -- Jonathan Swift
Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person. -- William Ralph Inge
Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government. -- Mackenzie King
One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda. -- Douglas MacArthur
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny. -- James F. Cooper
But on the big things, I'm not going to trim in order to win public opinion. Because I really don't want to serve in the Senate if I arrive there without permission to do the things I think need to be done. -- Bob Kerrey
Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential. -- Noam Chomsky
There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy. -- Noam Chomsky
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice. -- Gore Vidal
Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion. -- Albert J. Nock
Mob law is the most forcible expression of an abnormal public opinion; it shows that society is rotten to the core. -- Timothy Thomas Fortune
Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing. -- J. B. Priestley
Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government. -- William Lyon Mackenzie King
Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government. -- Mackenzie King
Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. -- James F. Cooper
It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed. -- Walter Benjamin
I believe if a private citizen is able to affect public opinion in a constructive way he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform a public service. -- Warren Beatty
Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others. -- Ray Comfort
The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands. -- Spiro T. Agnew
At the bottom of not a little of the bravery that appears in the world, there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they have not the courage to face public opinion. -- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions. -- Dilma Rousseff
This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion. -- Stephen Harper
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. -- Curtis LeMay
The Muslims have, as everyone else says, the right to practice their religion and they have the right to construct a mosque at ground zero if they wish. What I am saying, though, is that they should listen to public opinion, they should listen to the deep wounds and anguish that this is causing to so many good people. -- Peter T. King
There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion. -- Barack Obama
Public opinion wins wars. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Business leaders shape public opinion. -- Marvin Bower
Public opinion is a second conscience. -- William Rounseville Alger
Public opinion is a second conscience. -- William Rounseville Alger
In America, public opinion is the leader -- Frances Perkins
In America, public opinion is the leader. -- Frances Perkins
That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion. -- H. P. Blavatsky
Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing -- Henrik Ibsen
The course of business shapes public opinion. -- Marvin Bower
The only remaining superpower is international public opinion. -- Simon Anholt
Public opinion's always in advance of the law. -- John Galsworthy
What is public opinion? It is private indolence. -- Georg Brandes
Journalists should denounce government by public opinion polls. -- Dan Rather
Non-co-operation is the quickest method of creating public opinion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Sound conviction should influence us rather than public opinion. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas. -- Oscar Wilde
Israel does not care about the international public opinion. -- Bashar al-Assad
What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion. -- William Hazlitt
No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion. -- Robert Peel
Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Politicians have responsibility to act if the public opinion changes. -- David Titley
Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced. -- Elbert Hubbard
Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion. -- Walter Lippmann
Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Politicians, after all, are not over a year behind public opinion. -- Will Rogers
Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates. -- Ludwig von Mises
Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns among the stupid. -- Nicolas Chamfort
Public opinion is a courtesan, whom we seek to please without respecting. -- Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
Public opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress of human affairs. -- Frank B. Kellogg
In war, the moral element and public opinion are half the battle. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Public opinion is the last refuge of a politician without any opinion. -- Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham-Carter
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. -- Henry David Thoreau
The Lord's truth is not altered by fads, trends or public opinion. -- David A. Bednar
The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all. -- Mark Twain
Only fools, pure theorists, or apprentices fail to take public opinion into account. -- Jacques Necker
While public opinion might sway back and forth, right and wrong do not. -- Andy Andrews
Judges . . . rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should... -- Warren E. Burger
The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. -- Wendell Phillips
A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion. -- Charles Bradlaugh
Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think. -- Alfred Austin
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. -- Gore Vidal
public opinion, the sum of private opinions, does matter, can matter often for good. -- Sybille Bedford
Public and employer opinion often defeat society's best interests with a prejudice against middle-aged women. -- Kate Smith
When the panchayat raj is established, public opinion will do what violence can never do. -- Mahatma Gandhi
No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained. -- Abraham Lincoln
To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great. -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account. -- Raymond Barre
Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments. -- Charles Dudley Warner
The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode. -- David Cameron
There's a big gap between public opinion polls and the vote in Washington, in Congress. -- Gloria Steinem
It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. -- Joseph Goebbels
There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted. -- Rachel Field
With consumers having ever more choice, corporations must invest more and more in courting public opinion. -- Noreena Hertz
The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion. -- Albert Einstein
Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions. -- Henry A. Kissinger
We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity. -- Marco Rubio
Today's world is of public opinion and the fates of nations are determined through its pressure. -- Osama bin Laden
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion. -- Sidney Hook
The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it. -- Anatole France
Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one. -- James Madison
Public opinion is the judgment of the incapable many opposed to that of the discerning few. -- Elbert Hubbard
Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances. -- Mark Twain
Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. -- Mark Twain
Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government? -- Voltaire
Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point. -- Bertrand Russell
To attach no importance to public opinion, is a proof that you do not merit its suffrage. -- Napoleon Bonaparte

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