Polled Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes the imagination is the true predator. — Carolyn Jess-Cooke

The literary establishment in England was stunned, shocked, and scandalized by an event of millennial significance when a major bookstore chain innocently polled English-speaking readers, asking them to choose the greatest book of the twentieth century. By a wide margin The Lord of the Rings won. Three times the poll was broadened: to a worldwide readership, into cyberspace via Amazon, and even to "the greatest book of the millennium". The same champion won each time. The critics retched and kvetched, wailed and flailed, gasped and grasped for explanations. One said that they had failed and wasted their work of "ed-u-ca-tion". "Why bother teaching them to read if they're going to read that? — Peter Kreeft

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them. — Noam Chomsky

A 1990 Gallup poll found that 77 percent of Americans polled said abortion was the taking of human life. I agree, and believe that taking the life on an innocent child is unjust. — Robert Casey

We should never forget that when Jesus rose from the dead, as the paradigm, first example, and generating power of the whole new creation, the marks of the nails were not just visible on his hands and his feet. They were the way he was to be identified. When art comes to terms with both the wounds of the world and the promise of resurrection and learns how to express and respond to both at once, we will be on the way to a fresh vision, a fresh mission. A — N. T. Wright

We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling. — Elon Musk

I'm sure would like an opportunity to try to fix yours if you'd let them. — Penelope Ward

As with scientists, American university professors were more atheistic or agnostic than the general populace (23 percent versus 7 percent nonbelievers, respectively). But when professors from different areas were polled, it became clear that scientists were the least religious. While only 6 percent of "health" professors were atheists or agnostics, this figure was 29 percent for humanities, 33 percent for computer science and engineering, 39 percent for social sciences, and a whopping 52 percent for physical and biological scientists together. When disciplines were divided more finely, biologists and psychologists tied as the least religious: 61 percent of each group were agnostics or atheists. — Jerry A. Coyne

Many [of the Americans] polled showed a marked disapproval of the Wallonians, Danerians, and Pirenians. The fact that these minorities were invented by the pollster did not diminish the hostility. — Leo Rosten

These rotary dials were like meditation, they forced you to slow down and concentrate. If you polled the next number too soon, you had to start over from the top. — Rainbow Rowell

And the whole online thing is like, I just, that to me is a world that doesn't exist. It's not something you could touch or lick or smell. And as my eyes get worse, it's very hard to read. And there's no money in it. I mean, it's like they pay, like the best you can go is 1970 prices. — Richard Meltzer

Although we've been authoritatively informed that a majority of Americans support a "pathway to citizenship," approximately five hundred times in the last two years alone, according to a quick Nexis search,18 that is a lie. This is part of the media's campaign to convince Americans they're nuts for preferring not to turn America into Mexico. Polls are irrelevant if you lie to the people being polled. Poll: Do you support commonsense gun safety or are you against it? Headline: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT GUN CONTROL. But I hate gun control! Too late! You agreed to "commonsense gun safety" - that means gun control. — Ann Coulter

Covetous men need money least, yet they most affect it; but prodigals, who need it most have the least regard for it. — Alexander Wilson

[An artist] will sooner and with more certainty, establish the character of skeletons, than the most learned anatomist, whose eye has not been accustomed to seize on every peculiarity. — Rembrandt Peale

A June 2015 poll of Muslims living in the United States by the Center for Security Policy showed that a shocking number (51 percent) seek to embrace sharia over the U.S. Constitution. In addition, nearly one in four of Muslims polled believed that "it is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed." One in five respondents agreed that "the use of violence is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country" while only 39 percent believed that Muslims in the U.S. should be subjected to American courts. If, as the Pew Research Center estimates, there are approximately 3 million Muslims in America, that translates to roughly half a million U.S. Muslims who believe acts of terror and murder are legitimate tools in order to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia law. — Glenn Beck

What is new is that we know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is exploding, all the time. As far as I can tell, that is the intent and purpose of television news. We see so much, understand so little, and are simultaneously told so much about What We Think, as a populace polled minute by minute, that is begins to feel like an extraneous effort to listen at all to our hearts. — Barbara Kingsolver

It asked readers, "Hot pink dress-is it a do or a don't?" Now here's my question about this poll: who cares? If you want to wear a pink dress, wear a pink dress. It doesn't matter what other people think. One hundred percent of the people polled could say a pink dress is a "do" and guess what? I still ain't wearing one. — Ellen DeGeneres

Turner didn't have to put up with this. He had enough trouble with George's sarcasm. He held his hand. "Keys please."
Her face fell. "Sorry. I sometimes speak without thinking. Well, not sometimes. Often. Never an unspoken thought, my dad used to say. And my mum. And my employers. — Barbara Elsborg

There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. — Barack Obama

One by one, they guessed aloud about what Lotto had meant by this sculpture: nautilus, fiddlehead, galaxy. Thread running off its spindle. Forces of nature, perfect in beauty, perfectly ephemeral, they guessed. He was too shy to say time. He'd woken with a dry tongue and the urge to make the abstract concrete, to build his new understanding: that this was the way that time was, a spiral. — Lauren Groff

By the time Mann's scientific research was upheld, underscoring his integrity as well as the genuine danger posed by climate change, it hardly mattered. By then, the percentage of Americans who believed the world was warming had dropped a precipitous fourteen points from 2008. Almost half of those polled by Gallup in 2010 - 48 percent - believed that fears of global warming were "generally exaggerated," the highest numbers since the polling firm first posed the question more than a decade before. Watching from afar, Mann could see no cause for the United States to move in the opposite direction from science other than money. "In the scientific community, the degree of confidence in climate change is rising," he said. "In the public, it's either steady or falling. There's a divergence. That wedge is what the industry has bought. — Jane Mayer

The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the "meaning" of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer. — Herbert Marcuse

When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree. — Hermann Hesse