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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.

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
Ideas
False
Little
Ones
Opinion
Justice
Known
Refer
Facts
Prevail
True
Opinions
Littles
Effective

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The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
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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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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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The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
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To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
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The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
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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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No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
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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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Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.
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A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
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It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
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The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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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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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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