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The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

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
Wants
Present
Future
Problem
Really
Balancing
Central
Ethics

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There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.
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Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
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The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.
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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.
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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.
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There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.
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It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
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Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.
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The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.
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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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Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.
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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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We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.
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Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
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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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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
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The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.
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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.
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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.
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