Walter Lippmann Quotes
Most popular Walter Lippmann Quotes
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
The facts we see depend on where we are placed, and the habits of our eyes.
Many a time have I wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other.
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.
Propaganda is that branch of lying which nearly deceives your friends without ever deceiving your enemies.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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.
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
With exceptions so rare that they are regarded as miracles and freaks of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men.
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Cronyism is 'the curse of journalism. After many years I have reached the Arm conclusion that it is impossible for any objective newspaperman to be a friend of a President.
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.
I have never cared for an upholstered life, and, please God, I never shall. The protected existence, as I see it, is to refuse the risks, to be prudent and aquiescent, to sit tight, perhaps to climb cautiously, but never to plunge. I'd rather be squashed at the bottom of the heap than be planted at the top.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters.
With exceptions so rare that they are regarded as miracles and freaks of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
