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The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

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
Public
Appeals
Imposition
Sense
Private
Partisan
Nature
Intelligence
Partisans
Good
Soon
Comeback
Evidence
Loan
Citizens
Compliment
Perhaps
Citizen
Opinion
Insult
Beset

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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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If somebody can create an absolute system of beliefs and rules of conduct that will guide a business man at eleven o'clock in the morning, a boy trying to select a career, a woman in an unhappy love affair--well then, surely no pragmatist will object. He insists only that philosophy shall come down to earth and be tried out there.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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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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A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.
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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.
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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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One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.
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Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
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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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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
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Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
Walter Lippmann
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You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
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Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.
Walter Lippmann
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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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In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.
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The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
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The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
Walter Lippmann