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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 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 principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
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It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
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Creative ideas come to the intuitive person who can face up to the insecurity of looking beyond the obvious.
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The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
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To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.
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When all think alike, then no one is thinking
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If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
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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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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 everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.
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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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It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
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What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
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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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The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.
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The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
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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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There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
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The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal but ideas are immortal.
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