Quote

Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.

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
Opinion
Directly
Imagine
Opinions
Greater
Reach
Space
Bigger
Pieced
Others
Therefore
Reported
Together
Number
Inevitably
Things
Longer
Observe
Time
Numbers
Cover

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A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.
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If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained - then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
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It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.
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It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.
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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.
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There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.
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We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
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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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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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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
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Even God has been defended with nonsense.
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Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
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Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
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In a place where everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.
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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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The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
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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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Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.
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