Quotes of Walter Lippmann - somelinesforyou

“ Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ”

- 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

“ Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ 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… ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result… ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain… ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. ”

- Walter Lippmann

“ The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract. ”

- 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

“ The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill… ”

- Walter Lippmann
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