Walter Lippmann
In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbeliefCollection: Blood
Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.Collection: Country
The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.Collection: Drama
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.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Real
So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.Collection: War
Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.Collection: Political
And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.Collection: Government
The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.Collection: Men
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.Collection: Voting
We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.Collection: Freedom
Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.Collection: Love
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.Collection: Ethics
The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.Collection: Errors
For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.Collection: Book
Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.Collection: Giving Up
For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.Collection: Confusion
Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.Collection: Honesty
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.Collection: Men
Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.Collection: Football
The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Collection: Reality
It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.Collection: Idols
A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.Collection: Order
You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.Collection: Real
The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.Collection: Men
The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.Collection: Moral
To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.Collection: Love
To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a monastery.Collection: Men
The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.Collection: Men
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.Collection: Intelligent
What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.Collection: Truth
It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.Collection: Men
It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it.Collection: War
Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.Collection: New York
Leaders are the custodians of a nation's ideals, of the beliefs it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes a nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals.Collection: Leader
We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.Collection: Opponents
The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.Collection: Men
Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.Collection: Intelligent
A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.Collection: Media
The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.Collection: Eye
Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.Collection: Ideas
The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.Collection: Art
Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.Collection: Real
A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.Collection: Success
The function of news is to signalize an event, the functionoftruth istobring to lightthehiddenfacts, toset them into relationwith each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide.Collection: Reality
There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.Collection: War
We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.Collection: Evil
I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.Collection: Rights
True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.Collection: Ideas