Quotes By Walter Lippmann

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

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

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

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.

He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

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.

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.

A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

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

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

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