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The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

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
First
Civilized
Principle
Constitution
Principles
State
Power
Legitimate
States
Contract
Firsts
Contracts

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All achievement should be measured in human happiness.
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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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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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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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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.
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The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
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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.
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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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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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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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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.
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The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event ... For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.
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The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.
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