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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

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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
Energy
Democratic
Feeble
May
Succeed
Fixing
Firsts
Civilization
Jungle
First
Failure
Industrial
Life
Loss
Conquer
Effort
Unions
Class
Tragedy
Cooperative
American
Structure
Cooperatives

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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
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But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
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Love endures when the lovers love many things together And not merely each other.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
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The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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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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If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
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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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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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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
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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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