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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.

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
Live
Face
Cease
Must
Faces
Brought
Mend
Freedom
Congress
Examine
Children
Voice
Atheism
Savages
Men
Learn
Begin
Opponents
Like
Reality
Civilization
Civilized
May
Listen
Forced
Ideas
Opinion
Opinions

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
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To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
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Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
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Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
Walter Lippmann
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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
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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.
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When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't.
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The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
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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.
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The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Walter Lippmann
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Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.
Walter Lippmann
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The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
Walter Lippmann
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
Walter Lippmann
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If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained - then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
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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.
Walter Lippmann