Quotes by Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann

American writer, reporter, and political commentator

Alive from: 1889-1974

Category: Writers (Contemporary)

Quotes 1 till 15 of 44.

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

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  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.

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  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.

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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.

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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.

• Walter Lippmann

  

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  Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

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  Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.

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  Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.

• Walter Lippmann

  

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  Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power

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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 making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.

• Walter Lippmann

  

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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.

• Walter Lippmann

  

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  Let a human being throw the energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.

• Walter Lippmann

  

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