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Liberty May Be An Uncomfortable Blessing Unless You Know What To Do With It. That Is Why So Many Freed Slaves Returned To Their Masters, Why So Many Emancipated Women Are Only Too Glad To Give Up The Racket And Settle Down. For Between Announcing That You Will Live Your Own Life, And The Living Of It Lie The Real Difficulties Of Any Awakening.
-Walter Lippmann
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Liberty May Be An

Walter Lippmann
Liberty May Be An Uncomfortable Blessing Unless You Know What To Do With It. That Is Why So Many Freed Slaves Returned To Their Masters, Why So Many Emancipated Women Are Only Too Glad To Give Up The Racket And Settle Down. For Between Announcing That You Will Live Your Own Life, And The Living Of It Lie The Real Difficulties Of Any Awakening.
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Self
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Soul
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Minorities
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Men
Differences
Used
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Thinking
Poverty
Poor
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Flower
Technology
Inspire
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Monasteries
Retiring
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Men
Soul
Purpose
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Thinking
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Education
Hair
People
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Perception
World
Imagine
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Men
Ideas
Language
The Size Of A Man's Income Has Considerable Effect On His Access To The World Beyond His Neighborhood. With Money He Can Overcome Almost Every Tangible Obstacle Of Communication, He Can Travel, Buy Books And Periodicals, And Bring Within The Range Of His Attention Almost Any Known Fact Of The World.
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Communication
Men
Men Who Are Orthodox When They Are Young Are In Danger Of Being Middle-aged All Their Lives.
Men
Danger
Middle
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Education
Needs
Cost
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Enemy
Constitution
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Depressing
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Ideas
Fruit
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Lovers
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Soldier
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Movement
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Politics
Ethical
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Men
Thinking
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Men
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Expression
People
The Smashing Of Idols Is In Itself Such A Preoccupation That It Is Almost Impossible For The Iconoclast To Look Clearly Into A Future When There Will Not Be Many Idols Left To Smash.
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Society
Looks
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
In The End, Advertising Rests Upon The Fact That Consumers Are A Fickle And Superstitious Mob, Incapable Of Any Real Judgment As To What It Wants Or How It Is To Get What It Thinks It Likes.
Real
Thinking
Fickle
Run Against The Grain Of A Nation's Genius And See Where You Get With Your Laws.
Running
Law
Genius
Liberty May Be An Uncomfortable Blessing Unless You Know What To Do With It. That Is Why So Many Freed Slaves Returned To Their Masters, Why So Many Emancipated Women Are Only Too Glad To Give Up The Racket And Settle Down. For Between Announcing That You Will Live Your Own Life, And The Living Of It Lie The Real Difficulties Of Any Awakening.
Giving Up
Real
Lying
Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.
Ideas
Creative
Insecurity
When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking
Success
Funny Inspirational
Creativity
The Unexamined Life, Said Socrates, Is Unfit To Be Lived By Man. This Is The Virtue Of Liberty, And The Ground On Which We May Justify Our Belief In It, That It Tolerates Error In Order To Serve Truth.
Men
Errors
Order
We Forge Gradually Our Greatest Instrument For Understanding The World - Introspection. We Discover That Humanity May Resemble Us Very Considerably - That The Best Way Of Knowing The Inwardness Of Our Neighbors Is To Know Ourselves.
Knowledge
Knowing
Understanding
Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.
Horse
Business
Genius
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.
Missing
Lucky
World
There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.
Lying
Mean
Community
The Tendency Of The Casual Mind Is To Pick Out Or Stumble Upon A Sample Which Supports Or Defies Its Prejudices, And Then To Make It The Representative Of A Whole Class.
Class
Diversity
Support
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.
Men
Flow
Break
It Is Easier To Develop Great Power Than It Is To Know How To Use It Wisely.
Use
Easier
Great Power
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.
Sex
Satisfied
Ifs
What The Public Does Is Not To Express Its Opinions But To Align Itself For Or Against A Proposal. If That Theory Is Accepted, We Must Abandon The Notion That Democratic Government Can Be The Direct Expression Of The Will Of The People. We Must Abandon The Notion That The People Govern. Instead, We Must Adopt The Theory That, By Their Occasional Mobilizations As A Majority, People Support Or Oppose The Individuals Who Actually Govern. We Must Say That The Popular Will Does Not Direct Continuously But That It Intervenes Occasionally.
Government
Expression
People
The Principle Of Majority Rule Is The Mildest Form In Which The Force Of Numbers Can Be Exercised. It Is A Pacific Substitute For Civil War In Which The Opposing Armies Are Counted And The Victory Is Awarded To The Larger Before Any Blood Is Shed. Except In The Sacred Tests Of Democracy And In The Incantations Of The Orators, We Hardly Take The Trouble To Pretend That The Rule Of The Majority Is Not At Bottom A Rule Of Force.
War
Army
Blood
A Rational Man Acting In The Real World May Be Defined As One Who Decides Where He Will Strike A Balance Between What He Desires And What Can Be Done.
Real
Men
Balance
Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.
Ideas
Furniture
Eternity
Successful ... 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.
Insecure
Successful
Men
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.
Change
Mean
Social
Inevitably Our Opinions Cover A Bigger Space, A Longer Reach Of Time, A Greater Number Of Things, Than We Can Directly Observe. They Have, Therefore, To Be Pieced Together Out Of What Others Have Reported And What We Can Imagine.
Numbers
Space
Together
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
Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.
Purpose
Genius
Firsts
Leaders Are The Custodians Of A Nation's Ideals, Of The Beliefs It Cherishes, Of Its Permanent Hopes, Of The Faith Which Makes A Nation Out Of A Mere Aggregation Of Individuals.
Leader
Custodians
Belief
Men Have Been Barbarians Much Longer Than They Have Been Civilized. They Are Only Precariously Civilized, And Within Us There Is The Propensity, Persistent As The Force Of Gravity, To Revert Under Stress And Strain, Under Neglect Or Temptation, To Our First Natures.
Stress
Men
Temptation
Every Man Whose Business It Is To Think Knows That He Must For Part Of The Day Create About Himself A Pool Of Silence.
Men
Thinking
Silence
The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.
Mirrors
News
Social
Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.
Men
Personality
Lifetime
Men Fall Into A Routine When They Are Tired And Slack: It Has All The Appearance Of Activity With Few Of Its Burdens.
Fall
Tired
Men
Happiness Cannot Be The Reward Of Virtue; It Must Be The Intelligible Consequence Of It.
Rewards
Virtue
Consequence
The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
You Don't Have To Preach Honesty To Men With A Creative Purpose. A Genuine Craftsman Will Not Adulterate This Product. The Reason Isn't Because Duty Says He Shouldn't, But Because Passion Says He Couldn't.
Honesty
Passion
Men
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
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
Before You Can Begin To Think About Politics At All, You Have To Abandon The Notion That There Is A War Between Good Men And Bad Men.
War
Men
Thinking
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
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
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.
Success
Congratulations
Tired
Nothing Is Easier Than To Simplify Life And Them Make A Philosophy About It. The Trouble Is That The Resulting Philosophy Is True Only Of That Simplified Life.
Life
Philosophy
Trouble
The American's Conviction That He Must Be Able To Look Any Man In The Eye And Tell Him To Go To Hell Is The Very Essence Of The Free Man's Way Of Life.
Eye
Men
Essence
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 Emancipated Woman Has To Fight Something Worse Than The Crusted Prejudices Of Her Uncles; She Has To Fight The Bewilderment In Her Own Soul.
Uncles
Fighting
Soul
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
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
A Democracy Which Fails To Concentrate Authority In An Emergency Inevitably Falls Into Such Confusion That The Ground Is Prepared For The Rise Of A Dictator.
Fall
Confusion
Democracy
It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.
Men
Law
Desire
A Better Distribution Of Incomes Would Increase That Efficiency By Diverting A Great Fund Of Wealth From The Useless To The Useful Members Of Society. To Cut Off The Income Of The Useless Will Not Impair Their Efficiency. They Have None To Impair. It Will, In Fact, Compel Them To Acquire A Useful Function.
Cutting
Useless
Facts
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
It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.
Crosses
Born
Skepticism
It Is Perfectly True That That Government Is Best Which Governs Least. It Is Equally True That That Government Is Best Which Provides Most.
Government
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.
Air
Space
Long
The Principles Of The Good Society Call For A Concern With An Order Of Being - Which Cannot Be Proved Existentially To The Sense Organs - Where It Matters Supremely That The Human Person Is Inviolable, That Reason Shall Regulate The Will, That Truth Shall Prevail Over Error.
Errors
Order
Society
The Consent Of The Governed" Is More Than A Safeguard Against Ignorant Tyrants: It Is An Insurance Against Benevolent Despots As Well.
Tyrants
Ignorant
Democracy
The Man Who Raises New Issues Has Always Been Distasteful To Politicians. He Musses Up What Had Been So Tidily Arranged.
Men
Issues
Politician
The First Principle Of A Civilized State Is That Power Is Legitimate Only When It Is Under Contract.
Power
Principles
Firsts
When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.
Thinking
The Balancing Of Present Wants Against The Future Is Really The Central Problem Of Ethics.
Want
Ethics
Problem
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
The Host Of Men Who Stand Between A Great Thinker And The Average Man Are Not Automatic Transmitters. They Work On The Ideas; Perhaps That Is Why A Genius Usually Hates His Disciples.
Hate
Men
Average
Love Endures When The Lovers Love Many Things Together And Not Merely Each Other.
Love
Together
Endure
We Know That It Is Possible To Harness Desire To Many Interests, That Evil Is One Form Of A Desire, And Not The Nature Of It.
Evil
Desire
Wickedness
A Free Press Is Not A Privilege But An Organic Necessity In A Great Society. ... A Great Society Is Simply A Big And Complicated Urban Society.
Media
Privilege
Urban
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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