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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
Might
Prepared
Always
Majority
Hymns
Revolution
Minority
Politics
Purposes
Call
Minorities
Society
Revolutionary
Purpose
Defined
Certain
Democratic

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The emancipated woman has to fight something worse than the crusted prejudices of her uncles she has to fight the bewilderment in her own soul.
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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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When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
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The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
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The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.
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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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The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.
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A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
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So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.
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