Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

-Hippocrates   c.460
The Canon, vol. 4 (translated by  John Chadwick).

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

-Inge,William Ralph
  Outspoken Essays (first series),'Patriotism'.

The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

-James, Henry
  The Tragic Muse, ch.9.

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or unjustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. 444

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,15  Aug. Quoted in James Boswell The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785).

Le flatteur n'a pas assez bonne opinion de soi ni des autres. The flatterer does not have a good opinion of himself or of others.

-La Bruye'  re,Jean de
  Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'Des jugements', no.90.

Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvellous ideas.

-Leonardo daVinci
Quoted in Irma  A Richter (ed) Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1977).

Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.

-Lippmann,Walter
  Public Opinion, ch.1.

Liberty, asit is conceived bycurrent opinion, hasnothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

-McCarthy,Joseph R(aymond)
  Speech. Collected as 'The Contagion of Ideas', in On the Contrary (1961).

Mariage est un e¤  tat de si longue dure¤  e qu'il ne doit e"  tre commence¤   le¤  ge'  rement, ni sans l'opinion de nos meilleurs amis et parents. Marriageisa state of such longdurationthat it should not begin lightly, nor without the opinion of our best friends and parents.

-Marguerite d'Angoule"  me
 Heptame¤  ron, pt.40.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would nomorebejustifiedinsilencingthatonepersonthanhe, if hehadthepower, would bejustified insilencing mankind.

-Mill,John Stuart
  On Liberty.

Where there is much to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, muchwriting, manyopinions; foropinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

He his fabric of the heavens Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model heaven And calculate the stars, how they will wield The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances, how gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.76^84.

Thus you see, Sir, that these people are not so unpolished as we represent them.'Tis true, their magnificence is of a different taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opinion, they have a right notion of life. They consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while we are tormenting our brains with some scheme of politics, or studying some sciencetowhichwe canneverattain, or, if we do, cannot persuade other people to set that value upon it we do ourselves† We die or grow old before we can reap the fruit of our labours.Considering what short-lived weak animals men are, is there any study so beneficial as the study of present pleasure?

-Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley ne¤  e Pierrepoint
c.1716  Collected in Lord Wharncliffe (ed)  The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1837).

The era of free speech is closing down. The freedom of the press in Britain was always something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion; still, so long asthe legal right tosay what you like exists, there are always loopholes for an unorthodox writer.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  In the New Leader, 24  Jun.

   It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.

-Pierce, C(harles) S(aunders)
SelectedWritings,'Lessons on the History of Science'.

   We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

-Pulitzer,Joseph
c.1910  Quoted in Alleyne Ireland An Adventure with a Genius, ch.4.

   The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.

-Safire,William
  Of the so-called'silent majority'. Safire's New Political Dictionary.

   A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

-Sandburg, Carl
  Remembrance Rock, ch.2.

The military struggle may frankly be regarded for what it actually was, namely a war for independence, an armed attempt to impose the views of the revolutionists on the British government and large sections of the colonial populationat whatevercosttofreedomofopinionor the sanctity of life and property.

-Schlesinger, Arthur Meier
  'TheAmerican Revolution Reconsidered', in Political Science Quarterly, Mar.

My uncle was famous for his balanced point of view. At the time of which I am writing (when he was nearly seventy) it had become so balanced, that the act of balancing seemed rather automatic.One had only to offer him an opinion for him to balance it with a counter- opinion of exactly the same weight, as a grocer puts a pound weight against a pound of sugar.

-Spender, Sir Stephen Harold
World withinWorld, p.77.