Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail. Walter Lippmann More Quotes by Walter Lippmann More Quotes From Walter Lippmann 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 party power should-have When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists. Walter Lippmann theist humans men No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the 20th century. Our ancestors know their way from birth through eternity; we are puzzled about the day after tomorrow. Walter Lippmann sea average way When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers. Walter Lippmann philosopher politician trying Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power. Walter Lippmann power desire men 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. Walter Lippmann liberty freedom men Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are. Walter Lippmann drama life thinking Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark. Walter Lippmann libertarian liberty freedom It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do. Walter Lippmann irrational done reason The private citizen today has come to feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there, but cannot quite manage to keep awake. He knows he is somehow affected by what is going on. Rules and regulations continually, taxes annually and wars occasionally remind him that he is being swept along by great drifts of circumstance. Yet these public affairs are in no convincing way his affairs. They are for the most part invisible. They are managed, if they are managed at all, at distant centers, from behind the scenes, by unnamed powers. Walter Lippmann behind-the-scenes mind war 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 mountain wish people Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws. Walter Lippmann genius law running 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 lucky missing world One might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue. Walter Lippmann illumination dream might 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 flow break men 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. Walter Lippmann credit honesty two The modern world is reversing the old virtues of authority. They aimed deliberately to make men unworldly. They did not aim to found society on a full use of the earth's resources; they did not aim to use the whole nature of man; they did not intend him to think out the full expression of his desires. Democracy is a turning point upon those ideals in a pursuit, at first unconsciously, of the richest life that men can devise for themselves. Walter Lippmann expression men thinking Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. Walter Lippmann sap opponents looks Life can be swamped by sex very easily if sex is not normally satisfied. Walter Lippmann satisfied ifs sex It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol. Walter Lippmann makers idols
