Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.

—Alfred Austin

politics opinion thinking polling

About Alfred Austin

Portrait of Alfred Austin

Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his...

More quotations from Alfred Austin

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

—Alfred Austin

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.

—Alfred Austin

soul summer tears rain

More quotations tagged with “thinking”

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

thought independence thinking

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

—Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

discovery thought thinking

If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.

—Spencer Silver

learning thinking possibility

Ideals are a curse because they prevent you from thinking directly, simply and truly, when you are faced with facts. The ideal, the what should be, is an escape from what is. The what is is the fact that you are afraid—afraid of what your parents will say, of what people will think, afraid of society, afraid of disease, death; and if you face what is, look at it, go into it even though it brings you misery, and understand it, then you will find that your mind becomes extraordinarily simple, clear; and in that very clarity there is the cessation of fear.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things

fear simplicity society facts thinking misery ideal

History

9 Dec 2013 Added