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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

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
Men
Aged
Orthodox
Danger
Middle
Lives
Young

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The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
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Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.
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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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Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
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The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.
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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
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When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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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.
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A man cannot be a good doctor and keep telephoning his broker between patients nor a good lawyer with his eye on the ticker.
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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.
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Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.
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No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
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The devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants.
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In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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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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Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
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