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We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

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
Must
Opponents
Protect
Hear
Speak
Right

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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.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.
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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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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.
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To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
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Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.
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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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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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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind.
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The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
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We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
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The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
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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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