Quote

A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.

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
Fact
Income
Incomes
Facts
None
Compel
Better
Increase
Distribution
Great
Function
Efficiency
Would
Members
Fund
Cutting
Acquire
Wealth
Useless
Diverting
Society
Useful
Impair

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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
Image
Men are mortal, but ideas are immortal.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
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
The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
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
Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
Walter Lippmann
Image
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The emancipated woman has to fight something worse than the crusted prejudices of her uncles she has to fight the bewilderment in her own soul.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A man cannot be a good doctor and keep telephoning his broker between patients nor a good lawyer with his eye on the ticker.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.
Walter Lippmann