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.
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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
Make sure you have a different opinion and people will talk about you
Make sure you have a different opinion and people will talk about you
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change read more
For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.
It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion
It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion
And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just because there are a few hundred read more
And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic. Just because there are a few hundred other people sharing your lunacy with you does not make you any saner. Doomed, eh?
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth.
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth.
