Quote

It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.

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
Smash
Idol
Maker
Idols
Makers
Catch
Better

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
Walter Lippmann
Image
When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
Walter Lippmann
Image
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
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
Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong where truth is poisoned at its source one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people.
Walter Lippmann
Image
You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
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 time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event ... For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
Walter Lippmann
Image
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
Walter Lippmann