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Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.

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
War
Political
Good
Men
Think
Abandon
Thinking
Notion
Begin
Politics

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.
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Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
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Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: 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 first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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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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A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
Walter Lippmann
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Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
Walter Lippmann
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Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
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There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.
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Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.
Walter Lippmann
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There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.
Walter Lippmann
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
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The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
Walter Lippmann
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann
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What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.
Walter Lippmann