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Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.

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
Corruption
Ever
Enemies
Destroyed
Institutions
Constitutions
Constitution
Weakened
Corrupted
Enemy
Established
Friends
Governments
Government

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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
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In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.
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There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
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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.
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Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
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The news and the truth are not the same thing.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
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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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Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
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For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
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Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news.
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When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
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It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
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