"Public opinion is a second conscience"
About this Quote
Public opinion doesn’t just judge you; it moves in and starts redecorating. When William R. Alger calls it “a second conscience,” he’s not praising democracy’s wisdom so much as naming the eerie way social pressure can masquerade as morality. Conscience is supposed to be internal, private, stubborn. “Public opinion” is external, shifting, and often allergic to nuance. The line works because it fuses them anyway, implying that modern virtue is rarely a solo act. We don’t simply decide what’s right; we absorb a running commentary about what will be rewarded, punished, liked, or mocked.
Alger was a 19th-century American writer and minister steeped in a culture where respectability carried real stakes: employment, reputation, marriage prospects, civic standing. In that world, “opinion” wasn’t an abstract poll; it was the town’s memory. The quote catches a transitional moment in American moral life, as authority slides from pulpit and scripture toward the crowd and its norms. A “second” conscience suggests redundancy, but also competition: which voice wins when private conviction clashes with the community’s verdict?
The subtext is a warning wrapped in a diagnosis. Public opinion can refine behavior, keeping selfish impulses in check. It can also counterfeit ethics, training people to confuse goodness with compliance and righteousness with being seen as righteous. Alger’s phrasing is elegantly unsettling: it admits that we need social feedback to live together, then asks whether we’ve let the audience replace the soul.
Alger was a 19th-century American writer and minister steeped in a culture where respectability carried real stakes: employment, reputation, marriage prospects, civic standing. In that world, “opinion” wasn’t an abstract poll; it was the town’s memory. The quote catches a transitional moment in American moral life, as authority slides from pulpit and scripture toward the crowd and its norms. A “second” conscience suggests redundancy, but also competition: which voice wins when private conviction clashes with the community’s verdict?
The subtext is a warning wrapped in a diagnosis. Public opinion can refine behavior, keeping selfish impulses in check. It can also counterfeit ethics, training people to confuse goodness with compliance and righteousness with being seen as righteous. Alger’s phrasing is elegantly unsettling: it admits that we need social feedback to live together, then asks whether we’ve let the audience replace the soul.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by William
Add to List
