Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods --moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former --but no opinion.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Opinions that are well rooted should grow and change like a healthy tree.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and whatever you hit call it the target.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell by reiteration chiefly.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

What you think of me is none of my business.

A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle somewhere on my body. That's okay.

It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.

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.

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion" --not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing --to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.

He who has an opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.

Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step -- it is an old business procedure.

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up...

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.

It's not that I don't have opinions, rather that I'm paid not to think aloud.

Altered opinions do not alter a man's character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, and the skillful direct it.

A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

A fellow can't keep people from having a bad opinion of him, but he can keep them from being right about it.

A man is getting along on the road to wisdom when he begins to realize that his opinion is just an opinion.

If God thought about you as much as you think about Him, where would you be?

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

Please Note: Ashleigh Brilliant epigrams ("BRILLIANT THOUGHTS" ®) are individually protected by international copyright, and appear here by special permission. All rights reserved. To read more BRILLIANT THOUGHTS ® or to get permission to use Ashleigh's quotations, visit his website (www.ashleighbrilliant.com).