Quote

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

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
Real
Natures
Selection
Presidential
Figure
Figures
Personality
Call
Selections
Character
Interpose

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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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The size of a man's income has considerable effect on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood. With money he can overcome almost every tangible obstacle of communication, he can travel, buy books and periodicals, and bring within the range of his attention almost any known fact of the world.
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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.
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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.
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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.
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Creative ideas come to the intuitive person who can face up to the insecurity of looking beyond the obvious.
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind.
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Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
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In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.
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The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
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