Famous quotes containing the words public opinion, public, opinion and/or polls:
“It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“BOSWELL. But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad? JOHNSON. “Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it.... It is his business to judge; and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that the cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the Judge’s opinion.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people’s minds would be uninhabitable.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)