Quote

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.

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
Without
Results
Conservative
Scope
Country
Public
Fail
Depressing
Mean
Law
Result
Legislation
Trying
Nations
Increase
Afford
Depress
Much
Upon
Comfort
Experiments
Enlarge
Bigs
Failing
Enter
Audacity
Means
Nation
Lawyer
Survives
Truth
Policy
Radical
Trembling

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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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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.
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A man cannot be a good doctor and keep telephoning his broker between patients nor a good lawyer with his eye on the ticker.
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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.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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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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In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes.
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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.
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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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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True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.
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Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
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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.
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The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
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Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
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