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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.

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
Right
Important
Necessity
Beginning
Listening
Talk
Freedom
Makes
May

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
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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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The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
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To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolable persons.
Walter Lippmann
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I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
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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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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
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A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
Walter Lippmann
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A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
Walter Lippmann
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
Walter Lippmann
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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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.
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The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
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