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So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.

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
War
Doctrinaire
Sacrifice
Speech
Necessary
Concerned
Belief
Interest
Free

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The devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
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I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
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The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.
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Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
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Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
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The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.
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The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
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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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The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.
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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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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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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
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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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The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
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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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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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Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
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Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
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