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All Quotes by author - Walter Lippmann

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party. "

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

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

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

" Industry is a better horse to ride than genius. "

" 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. "

" It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most. "

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

" Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

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