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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

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
President
Journalist
States
Journalism
Many
Convinced
Long
Large
Life
Air
Head
State
Space
Presidents

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
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For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
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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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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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There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
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The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
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To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
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But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
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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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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
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Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence.
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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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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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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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The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
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It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
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