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

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

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There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
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There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
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All achievement should be measured in human happiness.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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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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While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.
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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
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It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.
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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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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
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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.
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Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
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Even God has been defended with nonsense.
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We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
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Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
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Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
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