Quote

The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.

Walter Lippmann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann