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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
Impossible
Law
Desire
Men
Abolish
Desires
Either

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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.
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Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
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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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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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Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.
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The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.
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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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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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Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.
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Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
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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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Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
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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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Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.
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The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
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Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.
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