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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.

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
Making
Experiment
Power
Minorities
Great
Experiments
Never
Sufficient
Coercion
People
Majority
Outrage
Necessary
Governing
Party
Minority
Rather
Consent

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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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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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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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Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.
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The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
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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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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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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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In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes.
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It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.
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Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.
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Even God has been defended with nonsense.
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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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While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.
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A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.
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Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
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Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
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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.
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In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
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