A Quote by Abraham Lincoln

Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice. — © Abraham Lincoln
Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.
I think polling is important because it gives a voice to the people. It gives a quantitative, independent assessment of what the public feels as opposed to what experts or pundits think the public feels. So often it provides a quick corrective on what's thought to be the conventional wisdom about public opinion. There are any number of examples that I could give you about how wrong the experts are here in Washington, in New York and elsewhere about public opinion that are revealed by public opinion polls.
I realize that my opinion is my opinion, not everybody has to believe it and I never tried to shove anything down anyone's throat, but I was willing to take that to the trenches if you know what I mean. I took that opinion to the wall, often in public, often had to... I often had to fight in public with the very same people who I was trying to convince to play my records!
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
Justice Scalia is predictable. He can be counted on to come down with a conservative opinion, and generally, to bring Justice Clarence Thomas with him.
I have a strong sense of myself. That gives me a sense of security. If I define myself by things that are always changing, like the public's opinion or what I'm wearing or what job I'm doing, there's no stability in that.
I have a strong sense of myself. That gives me a sense of security, you know? If I define myself by things that are always changing, like the public's opinion, or what I'm wearing, or what job I'm doing, there's no stability in that.
But two things are wanting in American civilization - a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice - a sense of humanity, which shall crystallize into the life of a nation the sentiment that justice, simple justice, is the right, not simply of the strong and powerful, but of the weakest and feeblest of all God's children.
Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.
The most significant life is the one lived on the basis of a personal sense of justice and the desire to see justice realized everywhere.
The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world.
The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units. Such an opinion is spoken of as 'public opinion,' a fiction which is appealed to by individuals and by groups as supporting their special views. It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy.
Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.
But there was no room at the inn"; the inn is the gathering place of public opinion; so often public opinion locks its doors to the King.
Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.
I'm a Jewish boy from Jersey. I was born with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a strong sense that the world can be a ludicrous, unfair, inhumane place.
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