Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential journalists and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. A prolific writer, his work shaped the thinking of generations of policymakers and thought leaders. In this post, we’ll explore his life and work, and consider his legacy.
We are glad to present you the most inspiring Truth, Opinion, Social, Human Beings, Society, Life, World quotes from Walter Lippmann, and much more.
Helps to reveal patterns and emotional needs behind your digital toxic habits.
The news and the truth are not the same thing. — Walter Lippmann
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
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. — Walter Lippmann
There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil. — Walter Lippmann
What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors. — Walter Lippmann
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change. — Walter Lippmann
The self–evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolable persons. — Walter Lippmann
The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes. — Walter Lippmann
There are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human. — Walter Lippmann
The deepest of all the stereotypes is the human stereotype which imputes human nature to inanimate or collective things. — Walter Lippmann
All achievement should be measured in human happiness. — Walter Lippmann
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters. — Walter Lippmann
There is an ascendant feeling among the people that all achievement should be measured in human happiness. — Walter Lippmann
Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon. — Walter Lippmann
You don’t have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement–that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it–that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings. — Walter Lippmann
Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
Thus the essence of freedom of opinion is not in mere toleration as such, but in the debate which toleration provides: it is not in the venting of opinion, but in the confrontation of opinion. — Walter Lippmann
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion. — Walter Lippmann
The world is vast, the situations that concern us are intricate, the messages are few, the biggest part of opinion must be constructed in the imagination. — Walter Lippmann
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
The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class. — Walter Lippmann
People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle–aged all their lives. — Walter Lippmann
A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless. — Walter Lippmann
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state. — Walter Lippmann
Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied. — Walter Lippmann
The American’s conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man’s way of life. — Walter Lippmann
A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it. — Walter Lippmann
Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others. — Walter Lippmann
Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life. — Walter Lippmann
Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle–aged all their lives. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past. — Walter Lippmann
It is in time of peace that the value of life is fixed. The test of war reveals it. — Walter Lippmann
The sovereign people determines life and death and happiness under conditions where experience and experiment alike show thought to be most difficult. ‘the intolerable burden of thought. — Walter Lippmann
The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn’t break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity. — Walter Lippmann
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth. — Walter Lippmann
It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives. — Walter Lippmann
The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security and stake their own lives in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs. — Walter Lippmann
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
A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done. — Walter Lippmann
Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions. — Walter Lippmann
The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned….That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions. — Walter Lippmann
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority. — Walter Lippmann
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
A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law. — Walter Lippmann
WALTER LIPPMANN QUOTES ON SOCIAL
The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat. — Walter Lippmann
The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples. — Walter Lippmann
The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself. — Walter Lippmann
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. — Walter Lippmann
But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another? — Walter Lippmann