What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters
There was a time when we were told. . . that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members. . . This language at the present day would appear as wild as that great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience.
The big powers are traveling on the dangerous road of armament. The signpost just ahead of us is 'Oblivion. ' Can the march on this road be stopped? Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has.
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].
When we are high and airy hundreds say That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place, While those same hundreds mock another day Because we have made our art of common things.
Politicians, after all, are not over a year behind public opinion.
I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don't see why anybody does.
Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system. )
To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion.
Public opinion in Egypt is very antagonistic to the way the dictatorship, Mubarak dictatorship, interpreted relations with Israel. Very antagonistic.
The Soviet Union's propaganda clearly wishes to use public opinion in this country to get the West to reduce its own arms while doing nothing themselves. In this way they would gain nuclear superiority. This is simply not on.
Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing
Public opinion is the judgment of the incapable many opposed to that of the discerning few.
All Governments rest mainly on public opinion, and to that of his own subjects every wise Sovereign will look. The opinion of his subjects will force a Sovereign to do his duty, and by that opinion will he be exalted or depressed in the politics of the world.
In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
In America, public opinion is the leader
That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion.
Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend.
If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism.