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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.

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
Free
Necessity
Bigs
Presses
Great
Press
Privilege
Complicated
Media
Simply
Organic
Society
Urban

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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
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You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
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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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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.
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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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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
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If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
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It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
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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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The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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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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Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.
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It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
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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.
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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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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In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.
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