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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.

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
Crosses
Born
Roads
Skepticism
Cross

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
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Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.
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It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
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The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
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Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.
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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
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There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
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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.
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The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.
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Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable.
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Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
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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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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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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.
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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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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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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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You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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