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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.

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
Life
Useful
Sleep
Whatever
Nature
Cannot
Become
Usefulness
Must
Cradle
Men
Useless

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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
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When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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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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The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
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Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
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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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It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.
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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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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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In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.
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The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
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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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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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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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Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.
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It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
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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 news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself.
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At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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