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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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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It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
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The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
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Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
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In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.
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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.
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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.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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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.
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
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There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
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If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained - then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
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