Source-backed quotations about forming, holding, revising, expressing and resisting opinion; public opinion versus independent judgment; and the boundary between opinion, knowledge and reason. Generic Perspective or Thinking material is excluded when opinion itself is not central.
“Public opinion—private laziness.”
The epigram provocatively suggests that adopting public opinion can sometimes substitute borrowed judgment for the harder work of forming one’s own view.
Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 482, “Repeated Once More”; Helen Zimmern translation.
“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
Darcy presents trust and esteem as difficult to restore once serious judgment has turned against someone, revealing both the firmness and the potential rigidity of his early character.
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XI, Project Gutenberg #1342. Fitzwilliam Darcy says this to Elizabeth Bennet during their discussion of faults; Elizabeth immediately identifies the position as implacable resentment, so the novel itself does not leave the maxim unchallenged.
“The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”
Change is treated as the condition of the world, while our experience of life is shaped by judgment.
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
“Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”
Martha jokingly dismisses “reason” when it threatens her determination to stay loyal to Miss Matty, revealing how people can rename disagreement as irrationality when affection fixes their decision.
Cranford, Project Gutenberg #394. Martha says the line during a comic but affectionate refusal to leave Miss Matty after financial trouble; it is character dialogue, not Gaskell’s definition of reason.
“You can’t yourself, but exterior influences can do it.”
The Old Man claims that opinions can change, but attributes the change to new evidence, conversation, study, and other influences entering from outside the individual.
What Is Man?, Old Man replying to the Young Man’s question about changing an automatic opinion; this is dialogic determinism, not neutral cognitive science.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Emerson attacks rigid consistency when it prevents people from revising judgment in the light of new thought.
Essay “Self-Reliance”; Emerson criticizes rigid adherence to past opinions when fresh judgment requires revision.
“All society therefore is either for gain, or for glory;”
Hobbes provocatively explains association through self-interest and reputation, setting up his argument about fear, power and the political conditions needed for lasting society.
Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, Chapter I, represented in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Project Gutenberg #73906. 'All society therefore is either for gain, or for glory' appears inside Hobbes's seventeenth-century argument from appetite, glory and self-interest; it is political anthropology/philosophy, not a modern empirical law of all relationships.
“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,”
Hume argues that reasoning can inform means and consequences but does not by itself supply the motivating ends that move a person to act.
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III, “Of the Influencing Motives of the Will,” Project Gutenberg #4705. The frozen catalog retains the opening clause “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” from a longer sentence. It remains Hume’s historical philosophical thesis rather than contemporary empirical psychology.
“But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many?”
Socrates challenges the idea that widespread approval should decide a moral question, directing attention toward informed judgment rather than numerical popularity.
Crito, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates responds to Crito’s concern about public opinion while awaiting execution.
“Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are pleased to think.”
Dependence on approval can turn other people’s judgments into a form of control; self-respect requires allowing outside opinion to inform rather than govern one’s sense of worth.
The Wisdom of Life; the sentence appears in Schopenhauer’s criticism of giving excessive weight to reputation and social opinion.
“Error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.”
Jefferson argues that political disagreement need not be suppressed when open reasoning remains available to challenge error, treating free contest rather than coercion as the safer response to mistaken opinion.
Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, reviewed against the public-domain Wikisource transcription. The error-of-opinion sentence follows Jefferson's distinction between differences of opinion and differences of principle during an appeal for republican political tolerance; it is historical political rhetoric rather than present-day legal doctrine.
“Be sincere, moderate, simple in the expression of your feelings and opinions”
The advice combines candor with restraint: truthful expression does not require exaggeration, and moderation can make feelings and opinions more faithful to their source.
The Simple Life, Chapter IV, “Simplicity of Speech,” Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner links sincerity, moderation and plain expression.
“Opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance?”
Opinion is treated as an intermediate state: it is not complete ignorance, but it also lacks the clarity and stability of knowledge.
The Republic, Book V; Socrates places opinion between knowledge and ignorance in the argument about what each apprehends.
“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.”
Epictetus separates an event from the judgment placed on it, making interpretation a practical point of leverage.
Enchiridion 5 in George Long’s translation; the passage distinguishes events from the opinions that disturb us.
“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.””
The statement asks whether part of suffering is sustained by the story attached to an event rather than by the event alone.
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
Thoreau argues that private self-judgment can become a powerful constraint or permission, shaping choices more strongly than public opinion alone.
Walden, “Economy,” in the passage contrasting public opinion with a person’s own private opinion of himself.
“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
Austen’s ironic narration shows how confidence and a favorable opinion of someone can make observers excuse behavior they would otherwise call foolish.
Emma, Volume II, Chapter VIII, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. After Frank Churchill returns from an impulsive haircut, Emma “moralised to herself” that silly things can cease to seem silly when sensible people do them impudently. This is Emma Woodhouse’s ironic private judgment inside the novel, not Austen endorsing impudence as a general rule.
“They must only bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the modest slaves of opinion.”
Respectability is grounded in independent reasoning rather than deference to social opinion, making judgment more important than approval.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; Wollstonecraft explicitly connects independence of character with the exercise of understanding.
“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.”
Twain turns pluralism into a betting joke: disagreement is presented not as abstract virtue but as the practical condition that makes a horse race worth wagering on.
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter XIX epigraph; a Calendar maxim paired with the good-example line.
“Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions.”
Milton treats disagreement as a natural consequence of serious learning: intellectual activity produces competing arguments because knowledge is still being worked out.
Areopagitica, in Milton’s defense of a city actively reading, discussing, and testing ideas.
“Shame and its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinion rather than the esteem of others.”
The sentence places moral injury in losing one’s own considered respect, not merely in losing social approval, making conscience a more important measure than reputation.
How to Succeed; the sentence appears in Marden’s discussion of temptation, aspiration, and the damage caused when self-respect is surrendered.
“It would be a miserable existence which should make its value or want of value depend upon what other people think.”
A life whose value rises and falls with public opinion has no stable center; Schopenhauer argues for locating worth somewhere less volatile than other people’s changing judgments.
The Wisdom of Life; Schopenhauer criticizes the habit of measuring the value of one’s existence by reputation or the fluctuating opinions of others.
“What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy”
Pater recommends intellectual openness and repeated testing rather than easy conformity, making revision and exposure to new impressions part of an active critical life.
The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The sentence names Comte, Hegel and one’s own orthodoxy in its immediate continuation.
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
Hume begins from the variability of aesthetic response, locating experienced beauty in the relation between an object and the perceiving mind.
“Of the Standard of Taste,” first published in 1757 and represented by Fordham’s Modern History Sourcebook transcription. Hume subsequently qualifies this apparent subjectivism by discussing practiced judgment and durable critical standards, so the sentence is not the whole essay’s conclusion.
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
Mill makes the number of people holding an opinion irrelevant to their right to silence dissent: minority speech remains worth protecting even when nearly everyone else believes it wrong.
On Liberty, Chapter II, Project Gutenberg #34901. Mill’s next argument is epistemic as well as political: suppressing an opinion can deprive everyone of truth or of the clearer understanding created when truth is tested against error.
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