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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

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
Imaginative
Desirable
Ideals
Possible
Understanding

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Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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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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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
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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.
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For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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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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People who are tremendously concerned about their identification, their individuality, their self-expression, or their sense of humor, always seem to be missing the very things they pursue.
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The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
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Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
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