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Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann Quotes

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Famous Walter Lippmann Quotes

“The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automaton in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.”

ThinkingMenWorldGivingHumansMadeDoneOrderHuman BeingsFireSkySecurityWindHabitProveCreaturesGiving UpBraveMereNobleFoolishDustUselessEaseClimbsRoutineClimbingNow And ThenBetter PlaceWisestMountaineeringMountain ClimbingPlaces To LiveClimbing MountainRock ClimbingVery Wise
Author:Walter Lippmann
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“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.”

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Book:The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy
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“I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.”

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Book:Force and Ideas: The Early Writings
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“The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.”

ThinkingMenHumansWholeGovernmentGivenHeavenImaginationJusticeExampleHe ManGoes OnOceanGainsMachinesAffairObviousHillsOfficialsTemporaryTapeRoofRebelliousPrecedentAdministrativeCivil Service
Book:The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy
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“The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.”

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Book:The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy
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“Successful democratic 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. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.”

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Author:Walter Lippmann
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