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Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.

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
Find
Questions
Even
Answer
Always
Genius
Time
Answers
Knew
Roosevelt
Full
Franklin
Though
Answered
Political
Lays

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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
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In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.
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Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
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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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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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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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While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.
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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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Even God has been defended with nonsense.
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
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Politicians tend to live in character and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism that describes him.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.
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Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
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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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A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.
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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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You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.
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No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
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