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The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.

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
Speech
Least
True
Earth
Idiomatic
Men
Bleachers
Saloon
Saloons
Sky

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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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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Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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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.
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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
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The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
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The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
Walter Lippmann
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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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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
Walter Lippmann
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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
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Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
Walter Lippmann
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Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
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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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The size of a man's income has considerable effect on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood. With money he can overcome almost every tangible obstacle of communication, he can travel, buy books and periodicals, and bring within the range of his attention almost any known fact of the world.
Walter Lippmann
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann