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Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.

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
Find
Principles
Suicide
Come
Answers
Commit
Name
Deny
Democracy
Destruction
Saying
Later
Shall
Demand
Names
Answer
Consenting
Rights
Unless
Formidable

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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
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Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
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There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.
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The devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants.
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Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
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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 first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.
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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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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 great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
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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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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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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 the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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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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