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Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.

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
Lifetime
Personality
Usually
Public
Known
Great
Even
Men
Fictitious

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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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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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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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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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
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This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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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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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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There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
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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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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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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.
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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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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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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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