Bill James Quotes

Part of me didn't know if Australia wanted its champion to be gay.

There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.

What we try to do is represent public opinion—and public opinion is anti oral sex.

If it makes people mad, they'll forget it by 1990 … I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level, and I'd be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute. I did what I thought was right.

When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.

I don't think there is prejudice against atheists the same way there is prejudice against fat people. I don't think people hate or contemn atheists; I think people feel sorry for atheists.

The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.

Nudity doesn't scare me at all; the only thing about it is the perception by the audience.

Will people think I've been dropped? Oh God, you don't want people to think that. No one will want to touch you if they think you got dropped.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.

That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.

I think a lot of the media love the game and hate the people who play it.

In addition to trying to do the right thing and obey the law and follow principle, there's a part of the conservative, slash, Republican movement that believes if we just show that we're fair and impeccable, then we will get credit from those who think we're all these horrible things, and maybe they won't hate us as much.

Your friends may love you in private but your enemies will hate you in public.

The majority of people do not accept my choices.

I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

Culturally, it's very hard to change people's attitudes about public space.

Take a look at public opinion. About 70 percent of the population, in the polls, said the [Vietnam ] war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. And that attitude lasted as long as polls were taken in the early '80s.

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.

Everyone went out and bought Sex, it was sold out in two seconds. And then everybody slagged me off. That, to me is a statement of the hypocrisy of the world that we live in. The fact that everybody is so interested in sex but won't admit it.

One should be weary of drawing too many inferences from a single poll. You can find wildly disparate results with two different polls. There is no question that American Muslims remain one of the most marginalized and demonized groups in United States. There has been a sustained propaganda campaign against Muslims for over a decade and it doesn't disappear over night. Those attitudes are hardened. But one of the things that polling often doesn't measure is the intensity of opinions.

Judgment of the people is often wiser than the wisest men.

Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue.