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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
Problem
Really
Balancing
Central
Ethics
Wants
Present
Future

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The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.
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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 first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
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People who are tremendously concerned about their identification, their individuality, their self-expression, or their sense of humor, always seem to be missing the very things they pursue.
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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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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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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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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
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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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Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
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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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The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
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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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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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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.
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