Walter Lippmann

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

“The modern skeptical world has been taught for some 200 years a conception of human nature in which the reality of evil, so well-known to the age of faith, has been discounted. Almost all of us grew up in an environment of such easy optimism that we can scarcely know what is meant, though our ancestors knew it well, by the satanic will. We shall have to recover this forgotten but essential truth ‑ along with so many others that we lost when, thinking we were enlightened and advanced, we were merely shallow and blind.”

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

“It is doubtful whether a supreme master of style could pack all the elements of truth that complete justice would demand into a hundred word account of what had happened in Korea during the course of several months. For language is by no means a perfect vehicle of meanings. Words, like currency, are turned over and over again, to evoke one set of images to-day, another to-morrow. There is no certainty whatever that the same word will call out exactly the same idea in the reader's mind as it did in the reporter's. Theoretically, if each fact and each relation had a name that was unique, and if everyone had agreed on the names, it would be possible to communicate without misunderstanding. In the exact sciences there is an approach to this ideal, and that is part of the reason why of all forms of world-wide cooperation, scientific inquiry is the most effective.”

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

“The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.”

“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.”

“Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

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

“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.”

“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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