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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.

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
Simple
Complex
Distortion
Often
Absolutes
Considerable
Truth
Radical
Unfamiliar
Great
Absolute
Suffers
Made
Honesty
Masses
Things
Mass
Distant
Hypothetical
People
Media
Relative
Communicated
Suffering
Complexes
Dogmatic

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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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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.
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Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.
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I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
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Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
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The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
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Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
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The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.
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In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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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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The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
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No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
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Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
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The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
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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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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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