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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

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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
Make
Always
Topsy
Like
Irrational
Serve
Ought
Seems
Reason
Done

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In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.
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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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This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
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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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The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.
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To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
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We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.
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Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news.
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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.
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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
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A man cannot be a good doctor and keep telephoning his broker between patients nor a good lawyer with his eye on the ticker.
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.
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We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.
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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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