Quote

The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.

Walter Lippmann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Authority
Depends
Acknowledgment
Shall
Invariably
Moral
External
Upon
Guidance
Depend
Ended
Search

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Politicians tend to live in character and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism that describes him.
Walter Lippmann
Image
In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
Walter Lippmann
Image
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Love endures when the lovers love many things together And not merely each other.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.
Walter Lippmann