We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated. – Walter Lippmann
There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation. – 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
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. – Walter Lippmann
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism. – 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
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people. – 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
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
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business. – 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
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
When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists. – Walter Lippmann
When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. – 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
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
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
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. – Walter Lippmann
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. – Walter Lippmann
A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. – 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
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark. – Walter Lippmann
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
