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Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.

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
Genius
Nation
Law
Nations
Running
Grain
Laws

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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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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The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.
Walter Lippmann
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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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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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Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
Walter Lippmann
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The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.
Walter Lippmann
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Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
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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A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
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Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.
Walter Lippmann
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You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
Walter Lippmann
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The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolable persons.
Walter Lippmann
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Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
Walter Lippmann
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Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind.
Walter Lippmann
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann