Walter Lippmann Quotes

Quotes about:

• Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people.

  Walter Lippmann

  Strong, Skills, People

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  86 Copy quote

• The news and the truth are not the same thing.

  Walter Lippmann

  News

  41 Copy quote

• When all think alike, then no one is thinking

  Walter Lippmann

  Success, Funny Inspirational, Creativity

  60 Copy quote

• It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?

  Walter Lippmann

  Saws, Facts, Opinion

  36 Copy quote

• The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

  Walter Lippmann

  Thinking, Doe, Presses

  53 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Lying, Mean, Community

  60 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Men, Justice, Liberty

  Walter Lippmann (1938). “The good society”, p.267, Transaction Publishers

  10 Copy quote

• A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.

  Walter Lippmann

  Fall, Confusion, Democracy

  Walter Lippmann (1936). “Authority in the crisis”

  5 Copy quote

• Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.

  Walter Lippmann

  Fall, Government, Order

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.241, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

• The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

  Walter Lippmann

  Democracy, Journalism, Crisis

  1920 Liberty and the News,'Journalism and the Higher Law'.

  42 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Inspirational, Positive, Music

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.324, Transaction Publishers

  530 Copy quote

• We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.

  Walter Lippmann

  Perception, World, Imagine

  Walter Lippmann (2012). “Public Opinion”, p.49, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• 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 disestablish 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, War, Differences

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.80, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.

  Walter Lippmann

  Insecure, Successful, Men

  1955 The Public Philosophy, ch.2, sect.4.

  41 Copy quote

• Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

  Walter Lippmann

  Democracy, Important, Public Opinion

  19 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Inspirational, Change, Success

  New York Herald Tribune 14 Apr. 1945

  30 Copy quote

• There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

  Walter Lippmann

  Law, Devil, Journalism

  Walter Lippmann (1995). “Liberty and the News”, p.15, Transaction Publishers

  32 Copy quote

• Love endures when the lovers love many things together And not merely each other.

  Walter Lippmann

  Love, Together, Endure

  Walter Lippmann (1929). “A Preface To Morals”

  15 Copy quote

• We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

  Walter Lippmann

  World, Belief, Captives

  18 Copy quote

• Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.

  Walter Lippmann

  War, Men, Thinking

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  18 Copy quote

• Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.

  Walter Lippmann

  Idols, Ideas, Fruit

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  9 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Honor, Duty, Dangerous

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface to Morals”, p.224, Transaction Publishers

  67 Copy quote

• Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Suicide, Rights, Names

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.59, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

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

  Walter Lippmann

  Funny, Humorous, Party

  13 Copy quote

• Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

  Walter Lippmann

  Book, Civilization, Names

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.385, Harvard University Press

  30 Copy quote

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