Walter Lippmann Quotes

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Consciousness, Worthy

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Public Opinion

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Illiterate

• People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Orthodox

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Property

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Social, Conscience

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opposition, Human Being

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Servant

• Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Social, Movement

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Success

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Principle

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in America

  Tags in Adventurous

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Humanity

  Tags in Civil, Problem

• 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

  Topics in Business

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Study

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reformer

• 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

  Topics in Knowledge

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Race

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Distant, Complex

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Topics in Society

  Tags in Democratic

Walter Lippmann (53)

Birth:	23rd September, 1989
Death:	14th December, 1974
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Critic, Journalist, Politician, Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 21st November

Births

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• 1929 - Marilyn French
• 1989 - Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte
• 1965 - Reggie Lewis
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Deaths

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• 1945 - Robert Benchley
• 1958 - Mel Ott
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• 1999 - Quentin Crisp