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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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
Flower
Technology
Endow
Cannot
Initiative
Best
Machine
Even
Flowers
Machines
Plant
Inspire
More quotes by Walter Lippmann
Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
Walter Lippmann
The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
Walter Lippmann
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
Walter Lippmann
Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
Walter Lippmann
Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
Walter Lippmann
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
The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
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
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
Walter Lippmann
All achievement should be measured in human happiness.
Walter Lippmann
If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
Walter Lippmann
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann