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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.

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
Either
Impossible
Law
Desire
Men
Abolish
Desires

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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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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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Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
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Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence.
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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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There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.
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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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Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
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A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
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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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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
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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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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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All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
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Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
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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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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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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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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
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