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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.

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
Future
Process
Past
Reason
Never
Life
Irreversible
Repetition
Opinion

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
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To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
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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.
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Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
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Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.
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The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
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The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.
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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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The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
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The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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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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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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Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
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