It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also read more

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as read more

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

As a leader... I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to read more

As a leader... I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a con-sensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the axiom: a leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're read more

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change read more

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.