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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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Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Ethical
Rule
Majority
Politics
Found
Justification
Superiority

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.
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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.
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Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
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The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
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A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
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Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
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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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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
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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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There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
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The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
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A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
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People who are tremendously concerned about their identification, their individuality, their self-expression, or their sense of humor, always seem to be missing the very things they pursue.
Walter Lippmann
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To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
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The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
Walter Lippmann