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The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.

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
Light
Relation
Truth
Picture
Make
Function
Men
News
Events
Bring
Facts
Hidden
Reality
Event

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

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The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied.
Walter Lippmann
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Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.
Walter Lippmann
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
Walter Lippmann
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A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.
Walter Lippmann
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You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
Walter Lippmann
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A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter Lippmann
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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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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.
Walter Lippmann
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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
Walter Lippmann
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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
Walter Lippmann