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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.

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
Always
Effects
Sentiments
Tenure
Men
Office
Perpetual
Offices
Public
Required
Constituents
Passion
Trials
Seekers
Sure
Sensitive
Sentiment
Lives
Effect
Sentimental
Political
Court
Restless
Government
Mass
Trial
Vehemence

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Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained - then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
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One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.
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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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To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
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The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
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Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.
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Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.
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There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.
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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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Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
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Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
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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.
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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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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.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
Walter Lippmann