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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Walter Lippmann

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Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Understand
Reporters
Inspirational
Enlightenment
Music
Requires
Nothing
Positive
Wise
Wisdom
Commentators
Audience
Deaf
Understanding
Requirements

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.
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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
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It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
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Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
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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.
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The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.
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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
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The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.
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Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
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The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
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For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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