Walter Lippmann Quotes
An influential United States writer, journalist, and political commentator.
(1889 - 1974)
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A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.
[Journalism]
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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
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A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
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A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
[Freedom]
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Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
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At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of human history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
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Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.
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He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
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Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.
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In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.
[Democracy]
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In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
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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.
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In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and ...superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to ....get what it thinks it likes.
[Advertising]
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Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
[Work]
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It does not matter whether the right to govern is hereditary or obtained with the consent of the governed. A State is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and dis-establish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern State claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and democrats.
[Government]
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It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
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It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
[Wisdom]
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Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
[The Future]
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
[Thinking]
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Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
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