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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.

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
Men
Clearly
Saws
Choose
Public
Interest
Disinterestedly
Thought
Presumed
May
Rationally
Would
Acted

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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.
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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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A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
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Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
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The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
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When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.
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Nobody has yet found a way of bombing that can prevent foot soldiers from walking.
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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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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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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
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At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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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.
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It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.
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When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
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Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
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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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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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