When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of thought.

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.

[P]ublic opinion in a democracy is a sort of funhouse mirror that reflects—albeit inaccurately, imperfectly, and often quite reluctantly—the views of the governing elite. To be fair, it also has a certain filtering effect which discourages some of the nuttiest intellectual fads, if only because they can be positively incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been to Harvard.

That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government.

The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units. Such an opinion is spoken of as 'public opinion,' a fiction which is appealed to by individuals and by groups as supporting their special views. It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy.

Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion.

What is public opinion? It is private indolence.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

Public opinion is no more than this,
What people think that other people think.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

Public opinion is the whore among opinions.

Public opinion is dismissed. That fact, once again, sends a strong message to Americans. It is their task to cure the dysfunctional political system, in which popular opinion is a marginal factor. The disparity between public opinion and policy, in this case, has significant implications for the fate of the world.