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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.

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
Insurance
Consent
Tyrants
Ignorant
Democracy
Despots
Wells
Safeguard
Well
Benevolent
Governed

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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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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Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news.
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It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
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The news and the truth are not the same thing.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.
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When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
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The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.
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One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue.
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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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Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
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The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
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It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
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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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