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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.

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
Humans
Birth
Uncharted
Way
Tomorrow
Puzzled
Century
Enters
Upon
Ancestors
Born
Ancestor
Doe
Eternity
Ever
Average
Mariner
Human
Sea
Mariners

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The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
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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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The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.
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There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
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Where love exists with self-respect and joy, where a fine environment is provided for the child, where the parents live under conditions that neither stunt the imagination nor let it run to uncontrolled fantasy, there you have the family that modern men are seeking to create.
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Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
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It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
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Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable.
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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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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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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
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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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The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
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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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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
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