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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.

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
Democracy
Fears
Humanity
Crowds
Freedom
Individuals
Religion
Loves
Paradoxes
Faith
Democratic
Compose
Individual
Beings
Humankind
Human
Mankind
Paradox
Humans
Movement
Crowd

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
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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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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
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We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
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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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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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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.
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If somebody can create an absolute system of beliefs and rules of conduct that will guide a business man at eleven o'clock in the morning, a boy trying to select a career, a woman in an unhappy love affair--well then, surely no pragmatist will object. He insists only that philosophy shall come down to earth and be tried out there.
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We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.
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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
Walter Lippmann
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Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
Walter Lippmann
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The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
Walter Lippmann
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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
Walter Lippmann
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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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.
Walter Lippmann