Quote

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

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
Unless
Reformers
Virtue
Invent
Inspirational
Substitutes
Something
Virtues
Attractive
Vices
Fail
Failing
Reformer

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
Walter Lippmann
Image
All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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
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
Image
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
Walter Lippmann
Image
What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
Walter Lippmann