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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.

Walter Lippmann

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Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
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More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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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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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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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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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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The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things.
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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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Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors.
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
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We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
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Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.
Walter Lippmann
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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter Lippmann
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Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
Walter Lippmann
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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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.
Walter Lippmann