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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.

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
Society
Conduct
Free
Affairs
Libertarian
Doe
Affair
States
Among
Men
Liberty
Administers
Justice
Administer
State
Libertarianism

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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
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What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.
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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
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The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.
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No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.
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The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
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There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
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We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.
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Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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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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He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
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It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
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The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event ... For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.
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What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
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I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
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