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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Lippmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 23
Died: 1974
Died: December 14
Journalist
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Together
Number
Inevitably
Things
Longer
Observe
Time
Numbers
Cover
Opinion
Directly
Imagine
Opinions
Greater
Reach
Space
Bigger
Pieced
Others
Therefore
Reported

More quotes by Walter Lippmann

Image
You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
Walter Lippmann
Image
When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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
Image
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Walter Lippmann
Image
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
Walter Lippmann
Image
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann
Image
A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Genius sees the dynamic purpose first, find reasons afterward.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
Walter Lippmann
Image
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
Image
Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.
Walter Lippmann
Image
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
Walter Lippmann
Image
For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.
Walter Lippmann
Image
Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.
Walter Lippmann