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I Do Not Despise Genius-indeed, I Wish I Had A Basketful Of It. But Yet, After A Great Deal Of Experience And Observation, I Have Become Convinced That Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius. It May Never Carry Any Man As Far As Genius Has Carried Individuals, But Industry-patient, Steady, Intelligent Industry-will Carry Thousands Into Comfort, And Even Celebrity; And This It Does With Absolute Certainty.
-Walter Lippmann
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I Do Not Despise

Walter Lippmann
I Do Not Despise Genius-indeed, I Wish I Had A Basketful Of It. But Yet, After A Great Deal Of Experience And Observation, I Have Become Convinced That Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius. It May Never Carry Any Man As Far As Genius Has Carried Individuals, But Industry-patient, Steady, Intelligent Industry-will Carry Thousands Into Comfort, And Even Celebrity; And This It Does With Absolute Certainty.
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Horse
Intelligent
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Dangerous
Once You Touch The Biographies Of Human Beings, The Notion That Political Beliefs Are Logically Determined Collapses Like A Pricked Balloon.
Political
Biographies
Balloons
The Press Is No Substitute For Institutions. It Is Like The Beam Of A Searchlight That Moves Restlessly About, Bringing One Episode And Then Another Out Of Darkness Into Vision. Men Cannot Do The Work Of The World By This Light Alone. They Cannot Govern Society By Episodes, Incidents, And Eruptions. It Is Only When They Work By A Steady Light Of Their Own, That The Press, When It Is Turned Upon Them, Reveals A Situation Intelligible Enough For A Popular Decision.
Moving
Men
Light
The Final Test Of A Leader Is That He Leaves Behind Him In Other Men The Conviction And The Will To Carry On.
Inspirational
Change
Success
A Really Good Diplomat Does Not Go In For Victories, Even When He Wins Them.
Success
Winning
Victory
Lovers Who Have Nothing To Do But Love Each Other Are Not Really To Be Envied; Love And Nothing Else Very Soon Is Nothing Else.
Love
Lovers
Love Each Other
A Regime, An Established Order, Is Rarely Overthrown By A Revolutionary Movement; Usually A Regime Collapses Of Its Own Weakness And Corruption And Then A Revolutionary Movement Enters Among The Ruins And Takes Over The Powers That Have Become Vacant.
Order
Weakness
Movement
The Present Crisis Of Western Democracy Is A Crisis In Journalism.
Democracy
Journalism
Crisis
Certainly He Is Not Of The Generation That Regards Honesty As The Best Policy. However, He Does Regard It As A Policy.
Honesty
Doe
Generations
The News And The Truth Are Not The Same Thing.
News
The Ordinary Politician Has A Very Low Estimate Of Human Nature. In His Daily Life He Comes Into Contact Chiefly With Persons Who Want To Get Something Or To Avoid Something. Beyond This Circle Of Seekers After Privileges, Individuals And Organized Minorities, He Is Aware Of A Large Unorganized, Indifferent Mass Of Citizens Who Ask Nothing In Particular And Rarely Complain. The Politician Comes After A While To Think That The Art Of Politics Is To Satisfy The Seekers After Favors And To Mollify The Inchoate Mass With Noble Sentiments And Patriotic Phrases.
Art
Patriotic
Thinking
There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.
Lying
Mean
Community
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.
Men
Prejudice
Life Is
In A Place Where Everybody Thinks Alike, Nobody Thinks Very Much.
Thinking
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.
Passion
Men
Office
If The Estimate Of The House Committee On Foreign Affairs Is Correct, Then Russia Has Lost The Cold War In Western Europe.
War
Russia
Europe
Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.
Men
Ideas
Immortal
And The Principle Which Distinguishes Democracy From All Other Forms Of Government Is That In A Democracy The Opposition Not Only Is Tolerated As Constitutional But Must Be Maintained Because It Is In Fact Indispensable.
Government
Democracy
Liberty
The Effort To Calculate Exactly What The Voters Want At Each Particular Moment Leaves Out Of Account The Fact That When They Are Troubled The Thing The Voters Most Want Is To Be Told What To Want.
Voting
Effort
Facts
The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
Culture Is The Name For What People Are Interested In, Their Thoughts, Their Models, The Books They Read And The Speeches They Hear, Their Table-talk, Gossip, Controversies, Historical Sense And Scientific Training, The Values They Appreciate, The Quality Of Life They Admire. All Communities Have A Culture. It Is The Climate Of Their Civilization.
Book
Civilization
Names
Brains, You Know, Are Suspect In The Republican Party.
Funny
Humorous
Party
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
For The Newspaper Is In All Literalness The Bible Of Democracy, The Book Out Of Which A People Determines Its Conduct. It Is The Only Serious Book Most People Read. It Is The Only Book They Read Every Day.
Book
People
Democracy
A Country Survives Its Legislation. That Truth Should Not Comfort The Conservative Nor Depress The Radical. For It Means That Public Policy Can Enlarge Its Scope And Increase Its Audacity, Can Try Big Experiments Without Trembling Too Much Over The Result. This Nation Could Enter Upon The Most Radical Experiments And Could Afford To Fail In Them.
Country
Depressing
Mean
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.
Writing
Men
Thinking
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.
Successful
Insecure
Men
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.
Done
Reason
Irrational
When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.
Men
Theist
Humans
All Men Desire Their Own Perfect Adjustment, But They Desire It, Being Finite Men, On Their Own Terms.
Men
Perfect
Desire
The Invisible Government [bosses] Is Malign. But The Evil Doesn't Come From The Fact That It Plays Horse With The Newtonian Theory Of The Constitution. What Is Dangerous About It Is That We Do Not See It, Cannot Use It, And Are Compelled To Submit To It.
Horse
Government
Play
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.
Age
Taught
Insight
Football Strategy Does Not Originate In A Scrimmage: It Is Useless To Expect Solutions In A Political Campaign.
Football
Political
Useless
The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.
Travel
Adventure
Usa
The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.
Art
Real
Confused
The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opponents Than From His Fervent Supporters. For His Supporters Will Push Him To Disaster Unless His Opponents Show Him Where The Dangers Are. So If He Is Wise He Will Often Pray To Be Delivered From His Friends, Because They Will Ruin Him. But Though It Hurts, He Ought Also To Pray Never To Be Left Without Opponents; For They Keep Him On The Path Of Reason And Good Sense.
Wise
Hurt
Opponents
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
The News Of The Days It Reaches The Newspaper Office Is An Incredible Medley Of Fact, Propaganda, Rumor, Suspicion, Clues, Hopes, And Fears, And The Task Of Selecting And Ordering That News Is One Of The Truly Sacred And Priestly Offices In A Democracy. For The Newspaper Is In All Literalness The Bible Of Democracy, The Book Out Of Which A People Determines Its Conduct.
Book
People
Office
We Are Told About The World Before We See It. We Imagine Most Things Before We Experience Them. And Those Preconceptions, Unless Education Has Made Us Acutely Aware, Govern Deeply The Whole Process Of Perception.
Perception
World
Imagine
An Alliance Is Like A Chain. It Is Not Made Stronger By Adding Weak Links To It. A Great Power Like The United States Gains No Advantage And It Loses Prestige By Offering, Indeed Peddling, Its Alliances To All And Sundry. An Alliance Should Be Hard Diplomatic Currency, Valuable And Hard To Get, And Not Inflationary Paper From The Mimeograph Machine In The State Department.
Offering
Stronger
Links
What A Myth Never Contains Is The Critical Power To Separate Its Truth From Its Errors.
Truth
Errors
Myth
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created. The Average Conservative Is A Slave To The Most Incidental And Trivial Part Of His Forefathers Glory - To The Archaic Formula Which Happened To Express Their Genius Or The Eighteenth-century Contrivance By Which For A Time It Was Served.
Average
Genius
Machines
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.
Ambition
Men
Animal
The Central Drama Of Our Age Is How The Western Nations And The Asian Peoples Are To Find A Tolerable Basis Of Co-existence.
Drama
Age
Asian
Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.
Nonsense
Has Beens
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.
Giving Up
Men
Thinking
Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.
Organization
Public Opinion
Newspapers
Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.
Character
Politics
Journalism
A Large Plural Society Cannot Be Governed Without Recognizing That, Transcending Its Plural Interests, There Is A Rational Order With A Superior Common Law.
Order
Law
Common
It Requires Wisdom To Understand Wisdom: The Music Is Nothing If The Audience Is Deaf.
Inspirational
Positive
Music
The Man Who Raises New Issues Has Always Been Distasteful To Politicians. He Musses Up What Had Been So Tidily Arranged.
Men
Issues
Politician
It Is Better To Catch The Idol-maker Than To Smash Each Idol.
Idols
Makers
Only The Very Rarest Of Princes Can Endure Even A Little Criticism, And Few Of Them Can Put Up With Even A Pause In The Adulation.
Criticism
Littles
Endure
The Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.
Business
Simple
People
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.
Moving
Light
Diversity
When Men Are Brought Face To Face With Their Opponents, Forced To Listen And Learn And Mend Their Ideas, They Cease To Be Children And Savages And Begin To Live Like Civilized Men. Then Only Is Freedom A Reality, When Men May Voice Their Opinions Because They Must Examine Their Opinions.
Children
Reality
Men
Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.
Ideas
Creative
Insecurity
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.
Freedom
Men
Liberty
Ignore What A Man Desires And You Ignore The Very Source Of His Power.
Power
Men
Desire
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.
Pride
Temptation
Arguing
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.
Strong
Skills
People
The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.
Mirrors
News
Social
To Keep A Faith Pure, Man Had Better Retire To A Monastery.
Men
Monasteries
Retiring
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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