Walter Lippmann Quotes
Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.
The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
A man cannot be a good doctor and keep telephoning his broker between patients nor a good lawyer with his eye on the ticker.
The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
The emancipated woman has to fight something worse than the crusted prejudices of her uncles; she has to fight the bewilderment in her own soul.
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.
The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.
I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.
The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas; perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.
The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news.
Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.
The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
