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Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.

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
Reliable
Govern
Criticism
Intelligent
Cannot
Government
Without
Reporting

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A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.
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We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
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A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
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The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
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The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
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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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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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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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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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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
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The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.
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There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
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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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