Opined

Our Canadian German teacher, who was English by birth, opined that to understand Shakespeare you would have to read him in German translation.

The Americans wanted to impose the idea that a book or film should be treated like any commercial object, because they understood that alongside the army, diplomacy and trade, there is also cultural war, a battle that they intend to win both for noble reasons — the United States has always opined that its values are universal — and less noble ones: the formation of minds is the best way to sell off American products. Consider that the cinema represents the top rank of American exports, far ahead of weaponry, aeronautics or information technology! Hence their desire to impose English as a world language, even if there has been a two-decade decline in their influence.

My friend Bratislav tended to think that extraterrestrials were humanoid in that they had a head, two arms, a body, and two legs. But I opined that extraterrestrials could have different configurations, as different as octopuses and insects on our Earth.