Quote

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

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
May
Neighbor
Inwardness
Best
Discover
Considerably
Way
Instruments
Forge
World
Greatest
Introspection
Humanity
Resemble
Knowing
Neighbors
Understanding
Gradually
Knowledge
Instrument

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
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Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
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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.
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
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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.
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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.
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The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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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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At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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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 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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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
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Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.
Walter Lippmann
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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
Walter Lippmann
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We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.
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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.
Walter Lippmann