That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.

It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

Lincoln's stature and strength his intelligence and ambition - in short all the elements which gave him popularity among men in New Salem rendered him equally attractive to the fair sex of that village.

Regardless of who originally made it popular any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it from the Classics to modern plays to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.

Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.

Like most citizens of popular and international urban centres I don't take advantage of the cultural opportunities. Perhaps this comes from growing up in suburbia. Home is where you eat sleep read watch television and ignore your parents. It is not where you go to the ballet and then attend a heated panel discussion about it afterwards.