Opinion Shift Quotes

...people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.

What is wrong with changing your mind because the facts changed? But you have to be able to say why you changed your mind and how the facts changed.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

In politics its almost as big a sin to change your mind as it is to be wrong.

… moral ideas are not fixed. The attitude of public opinion towards slavery was completely changed in twenty or thirty years.

The job of campaigning is to change minds.

Public opinion is an extremely mutable thing

If someone starts agreeing with me, I don't like it. Out of pique, I become something else.

The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

There is no point in asking me general questions because I am always changing my mind.

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected.

You don't change minds in Washington with sweet reason. You do it to the white light of public opinion.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

American public opinion, as you can see in the polls, radically changed from being against airstrikes to being heavily in favor that [President Obama] decided to do airstrikes. This is a classic example of leading from behind where he waits for public opinion. And now it's the public who's demanding he do something.

The reversal of a Supreme Court opinion is possible.

I like to think I've changed the centre of gravity on lots of national debates.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

I think the further away you get from completing a book, the more responses you see to it from readers, the more your own tastes and opinions shift and the more you start to see things you could have written differently in the detail, or done differently on the broader scale of plot and character.

I think history has shown that the worst way to [try to] bring people over and actually change public opinion is by insult and applied degradation of them.

You don't accomplish a lot by changing people's opinions by shoving facts down their throat. I think you change people's opinions by opening your heart up and showing the parallels between you and another person. That's how people's ideas shift.

Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it.

I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn't have to get one.

It is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.