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

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In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes.
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What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...
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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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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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What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.
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The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
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When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
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The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
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To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
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Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
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The emancipated woman has to fight something worse than the crusted prejudices of her uncles she has to fight the bewilderment in her own soul.
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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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Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence.
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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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If somebody can create an absolute system of beliefs and rules of conduct that will guide a business man at eleven o'clock in the morning, a boy trying to select a career, a woman in an unhappy love affair--well then, surely no pragmatist will object. He insists only that philosophy shall come down to earth and be tried out there.
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There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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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.
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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.
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