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The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.

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
Men
Ground
Unexamined
Life
Lived
Unfit
Virtue
Socrates
Liberty
Tolerate
Belief
Error
Order
Justify
Truth
Errors
May
Serve
Tolerates

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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.
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If somebody can create an absolute system of beliefs and rules of conduct that will guide a business man at eleven o'clock in the morning, a boy trying to select a career, a woman in an unhappy love affair--well then, surely no pragmatist will object. He insists only that philosophy shall come down to earth and be tried out there.
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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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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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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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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.
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The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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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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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
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It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
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True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
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