Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
This is the inevitable fate of the sentimentalist. All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality.
Nothing is more deceitful, than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Opinion considers the opposition of what is true and false quite rigid, and, confronted with a philosophical system, it expects agreement or contradiction. And in an explanation of such a system, opinion still expects to find one or the other.
I like to have strong opinions with nothing to back them up with besides my primal sincerity. I like sincerity. I lack sincerity.
You expect me to account for opinions which you chuse to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.
Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
What is going on in the Un-American Activities Committee worries me primarily because little people have become frightened and we find ourselves living in the atmosphere of a police state, where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion.
We often contradict an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it is expressed that is unsympathetic to us.[Man widerspricht oft einer Meinung, während uns eigentlich nur der Ton, mit dem sie vorgetragen wurde, unsympathisch ist.]
We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.
Unless they share our opinions, we seldom find people sensible.[Nous ne trouvons guère de gens de bon sens, que ceux qui sont de notre avis.]
