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To a gentleman, who, at the close of a fierce dispute with Porson, exclaimed, "My opinion of you is most contemptible, Sir"; he retorted, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible."
--
John Selby Watson, The Life of Richard Porson, M.A. (1861), p. 385.

 

Richard Porson

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"We begin well, sir," the fat man purred ... "I distrust a man that says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink too much it's because he's not to be trusted when he does. ... Well, sir, here's to plain speaking and clear understanding. ... You're a close-mouthed man?"
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In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

 

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He said "I'll punch your head!" I said "Whose?" He said "Yours!"
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Robb Wilton

 

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.

 

Karl Jaspers