Quote

We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

Walter Lippmann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
World
Captives
Experienced
Exists
Picture
Head
Belief
Really

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.
Walter Lippmann
Image
While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.
Walter Lippmann
Image
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
Walter Lippmann
Image
All achievement should be measured in human happiness.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
Walter Lippmann