Public Opinion Polls

Famous quotes containing the words public, opinion and/or polls:

    “Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
    —David Elkind (20th century)

    “When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.”
    —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    “The polls say we are within three points. We haven’t made many converts, but we sure have made a lot of undecided.”
    —Jeremy Larner, U.S. screenwriter. Lucas (Peter Boyle)