Opinion
"Common Opinion" is what the English Social philosopher David Hume called it in his 1739 published work. Agreement and a sense of the common is what lay behind the English and French "opinion." In researching the term opinion, which is pronounced meinung in German, researchers were led back to Plato's Republic. In Plato's Republic, a quote from Socrates conclude that opinion takes the middle position. Kantt (1893,411)considered opinion to be an "insufficient judgement, subjectively as well as objectively." How valuable opinion may be was left out, however, the fact that it is suggested to be unified agreement of a population, or segment of the population, was still considered.
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Famous quotes containing the word opinion:
“Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)