Quote

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

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
Men
Certainty
Saving
Humility
Pride
Doubt
Belief
Reaches
Lasts
Acquired
Last
Beliefs

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Where love exists with self-respect and joy, where a fine environment is provided for the child, where the parents live under conditions that neither stunt the imagination nor let it run to uncontrolled fantasy, there you have the family that modern men are seeking to create.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
Walter Lippmann
Image
When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
Walter Lippmann
Image
You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
Image
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
Walter Lippmann
Image
One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
Walter Lippmann
Image
No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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
Image
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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
Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant fail to use them and it is weak.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
Walter Lippmann