dissenting views Quotes

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

It had run as a column - I had worked at the paper since 1976, but the column had been running for 13 years, and I think it was a strong column, criticizing the war when the paper was supporting it.

Academic freedom and free speech mean the right to consider ideas with which you might disagree.

Nine times out of ten your two smartest policy advisors disagree.

Everybody's entitled to think whatever they want and to express that, but my personal day-to-day experience does not come into contact with any of those people.

I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign... and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.

In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't.

The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality

You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

In today’s Washington, with its emphasis on orthodox thinking, such a person could never rise inside the government … This is a great loss, because, as the life of George F. Kennan shows, individual, original thinking by one lonely person can sometimes illuminate and guide us better than all the high-level panels, commissions and interagency meetings.

The chief arguments that are urged against an established religion, may be used with equal force against an established charity. The dissenter submits, that no party has a right to compel him to contribute to the support of doctrines, which do not meet his approbation. The rate-payer may as reasonably argue, that no one is justified in forcing him to subscribe towards the maintenance of persons, whom he does not consider deserving of relief.

It doesn't always turn out. It's not always a happy ending when sometimes you say things that you think, and it goes against the grain of the larger group.

Let each class of dissenting socialists stand aloof from our Republic and experiment to their hearts content on their own wiser system. It is their right to do so uninjured and at their own cost.

To an extent that undermines classical standards of science, some purported scientific results concerning 'HIV' and 'AIDS' have been handled by press releases, by disinformation, by low-quality studies, and by some suppression of information, manipulating the media and people at large. When the official scientific press does not report correctly, or obstructs views dissenting from those of the scientific establishment, it loses credibility and leaves no alternative but to find information elsewhere.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

When permitted to listen to alternative opinions and engage in substantive debate, people have been known to change their minds. It can happen.

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

Everybody is allowed to have their own opinion.

I am so out of sympathy with what seems to be the prevailing currents of American opinion that I keep my judgment suspended as regards the political wisdom of certain [Republican] party moves

They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.

I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it.

Loyalty ... is a realization that America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent.

Each person can think what they want.

I don't think we live in a place where we don't want people to be able to say when they disagree with the president or incoming administration.