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A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.

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
Sees
Conscious
Men
Life
Prejudices
Prejudice

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.
Walter Lippmann
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A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
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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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
Walter Lippmann
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For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
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.
Walter Lippmann
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The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.
Walter Lippmann
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
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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But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
Walter Lippmann
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Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
Walter Lippmann
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A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.
Walter Lippmann
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
Walter Lippmann
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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
Walter Lippmann
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The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
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
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
Walter Lippmann
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Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann