169 Quotes About Public-opinion

If market pricing is the only legitimate test of quality, why are we still bothering with proven theorems? Why don't we just have a vote on whether a theorem is true? To make it better we'll have everyone vote on it, especially the hundreds of millions of people who don't understand the math. Would that satisfy you?

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.

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

whatever it is, decentralisation is the key of progress for human/country/society. centralisation will always disruptive in long term.

One less desirable aspect of democracy is that it seems to require serious demonization of the enemy if the nation and public opinion are to be galvanized sufficiently to pay a serious price in blood or treasure at war.

It's confusing when people who do not know me say they miss the old me. You know me merely through the lyrics I write and the pictures I've been in. There is no old or new Hayley. There is however an older Hayley. I'm 25 now. Good on me for living through all these years with a million people's judging eyes all over me and thinking they know me better.

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.' 'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a public radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind.

Misunderstanding is generally simpler than true understanding, and hence has more potential for popularity.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?