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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.

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
Come
Theory
Much
Easier
Theories
Things
Pretty
Argue
Think
Results
Capital
Thinking
Rights
Arguing
Talk
Abstract
Poor
Soon
Ideas
Poverty

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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
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Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
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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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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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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 everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.
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Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.
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The news and the truth are not the same thing.
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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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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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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.
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The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
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You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.
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