Quote

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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Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Part
Wiser
Seems
Preserves
Men
Evolve
Life
Flow
Hastens
Present
Directs
Break
Vividly
Future
Evolving
Doesn
Continuity

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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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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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.
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Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
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The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.
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Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
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Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant fail to use them and it is weak.
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The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
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Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
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The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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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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The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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The mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.
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We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.
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When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
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Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
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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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The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.
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