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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
Make
Function
Men
News
Events
Bring
Facts
Hidden
Reality
Event
Light
Relation
Truth
Picture
More quotes by Walter Lippmann
The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
Walter Lippmann
The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
Walter Lippmann
And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.
Walter Lippmann
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
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
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
It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.
Walter Lippmann
It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
Walter Lippmann
A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.
Walter Lippmann
All men desire their own perfect adjustment, but they desire it, being finite men, on their own terms.
Walter Lippmann
There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.
Walter Lippmann
The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things.
Walter Lippmann
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
Walter Lippmann
No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow.
Walter Lippmann
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
Walter Lippmann
It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
Walter Lippmann
The size of a man's income has considerable effect on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood. With money he can overcome almost every tangible obstacle of communication, he can travel, buy books and periodicals, and bring within the range of his attention almost any known fact of the world.
Walter Lippmann
Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
Walter Lippmann
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
