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We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.

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
Freedom
Individuals
Individual
Notion
Must
Majority
People
Theory
Oppose
Instead
Adopt
Democracy
Govern
Support
Occasional
Actually
Abandon

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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
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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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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
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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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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
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