Quote

There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.

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
Thinking
Evil
Temporary
Nature
Forgive
Inquisitions
May
Final
Inquisition
Ideas
Finals
Disastrous
Nothing
Forgiving
Regards
Self
Easily
Skepticism
Always
Train
Deception
Think
Regard
Sooner

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
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 tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Where love exists with self-respect and joy, where a fine environment is provided for the child, where the parents live under conditions that neither stunt the imagination nor let it run to uncontrolled fantasy, there you have the family that modern men are seeking to create.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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.
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
True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Walter Lippmann
Image
There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
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
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
The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
Walter Lippmann