#opinion

The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it. ↗

— Andre Maurois

#defend #difficult #know #opinion #part

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion. ↗

— Phyllis McGinley

#argument #armed #blithe #calls #come

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion. ↗

— James McGreevey

#being #best #closet #election #first

There can be differences of opinion without there being personal differences. ↗

— Lynne Cheney

#differences #opinion #personal #without

There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment, but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion. ↗

— Samantha Mumba

#american #around #artists #attitude #bit

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny. ↗

— James F. Cooper

#democracies #exhibit #form #law #masses

I accrued anger from people's low opinion of me and my work, and for the work I might be capable of. ↗

— Harrison Ford

#capable #i #low #me #might

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#automobile #because #come #debate #emphasize

Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. ↗

— Francis Wright

#grounds #into #look #nature #opinions

In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge? ↗

— Neil Postman

#ignorance #knowledge #media #nate-silver #opinions