Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Where all think alike, none thinks very much.

Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship.

Feeling angry is a universal human phenomenon. It is as basic as feeling hungry, lonely, loving, or tired. The capacity to feel angry and to respond in some way to that feeling is in us from birth.

Public opinion is a second conscience.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

The collection of prejudices which is called political philosophy is useful provided that it is not called philosophy.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all.

Quebec has no opinions, only emotions.

It is not possible to assume that a world carried on by division of labor and authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Conventional wisdom is not always wrong.

It is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if those idiotic ideas are broadly and fervently believed.

The populace is like the sea, motionless in itself, but stirred by every wind, even the lightest breeze.

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed.

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.... The public have neither shame nor gratitude.

Public opinion is the most potent monarch this world knows.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which evokes more anger – businesses that know and care about nothing except profits or governments that know and care about nothing except power and paper-pushing. However, anger is not a solution. Anger attempts to shout down problems, and it never works.

The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against