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What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary 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
Society
Revolutionary
Purpose
Defined
Certain
Democratic
Might
Prepared
Always
Majority
Hymns
Revolution
Minority
Politics
Purposes
Call
Minorities

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There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.
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The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.
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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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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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All achievement should be measured in human happiness.
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In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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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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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
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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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Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
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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 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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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
Walter Lippmann
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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
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Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
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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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We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.
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You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't.
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