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Politicians tend to live in character and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism that describes him.

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
Public
Describes
Politics
Imitate
Character
Journalism
Live
Politicians
Come
Tend
Many
Figure
Politician
Figures

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.
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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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The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
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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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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.
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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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Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: 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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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.
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You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
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The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
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