Plato, on Political Opinions
I once commented to a friend, “If you have to say ‘I am entitled to my opinion’… you’re not.” In a similar, but more verbose vein, we have Plato:
“Now I observe that when we are met together in the assembly, and the matter in hand relates to building, the builders are summoned as advisers; … And if some person offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art, even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh … But when the question is an affair of state, then everybody is free to have a say–carpenter, tinker, … and no one reproaches him, as in the former case, with not having learned, and having no teacher, and yet giving advice; evidently because they are under the impression that this sort of knowledge cannot be taught….”
…courtesy Marginal Revolution.