This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When a law is proposed in the people’s assembly, what is asked of them is not precisely whether they approve of the proposition or reject it, but whether it is in conforming with the general will which is theirs; each by giving his vote gives his opinion on this question, and the counting of votes yields a declaration of the general will. When, therefore, the opinion contrary to my own prevails, this proves only that I have made a mistake, and that what I believed to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion had prevailed against the general will, I should have done something other than what I had willed, and then I should not have been free. This presupposes, it is true, that all characteristics of the general will are still to be found in the majority; when these cease to be there, no matter what position men adopt, there is no longer any freedom.
Character | Freedom | Giving | Law | Majority | Men | Mistake | Opinion | People | Position | Question | Will |
Madame de Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné
Nothing is more certain of destroying any good feeling that may be cherished towards us than to show distrust. To be suspected as an enemy is often enough to make a man become so; the whole matter is over, there is no farther use of guarding against it. On the contrary, confidence leads us naturally to act kindly, we are affected by the good opinion which others entertain of us, and we are not easily induced to lose it.
Character | Confidence | Distrust | Enemy | Enough | Good | Man | Nothing | Opinion |
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
We tolerate differences of opinion in people who are familiar to us. But differences of opinion in people we do not know sounds like heresy or plots.
To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.
The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.
Authority | Government | Opinion | People | Property | Public | Wisdom | Government |
Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana
The ambitious man grasps at opinion as necessary to his designs; the vain man sure for it as a testimony to his merit; the honest man demands it as his due; and most men consider it as necessary to their existence.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinions of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.
If in the last few years you hadn't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.