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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.

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
Learned
Start
Conserves
Knowledge
Ancestors
Society
Traditions
Men
Ancestor
Progressive
Tradition
Already

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Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
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For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
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True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
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It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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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.
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Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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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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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
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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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People who are tremendously concerned about their identification, their individuality, their self-expression, or their sense of humor, always seem to be missing the very things they pursue.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
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