Quote

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

Walter Lippmann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Seek
Prophecy
Taught
Preach
Teach
Revealed
Age
Reveal
Rather
Customs
Cannot
Ages
Unsettled
Must
Insight
Moralist
Necessarily
Custom

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Even God has been defended with nonsense.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: 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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Where love exists with self-respect and joy, where a fine environment is provided for the child, where the parents live under conditions that neither stunt the imagination nor let it run to uncontrolled fantasy, there you have the family that modern men are seeking to create.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.
Walter Lippmann
Image
In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
Walter Lippmann
Image
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
Walter Lippmann