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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

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
Become
Humans
Must
Men
Theists
Humanists
Theist
Civilized
Longer

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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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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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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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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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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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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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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.
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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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Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
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Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.
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We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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