Background Image
...
Only The Consciousness Of A Purpose That Is Mightier Than Any Man And Worthy Of All Men Can Fortify And Inspirit And Compose The Souls Of Men.
-Walter Lippmann
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Only The Consciousness Of

Walter Lippmann
...
Only The Consciousness Of A Purpose That Is Mightier Than Any Man And Worthy Of All Men Can Fortify And Inspirit And Compose The Souls Of Men.

Understanding the Quote: "only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man..."

This quote by Walter Lippmann reflects deeply on the theme of men. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Men, Soul, Purpose, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Walter Lippmann interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann is celebrated for insightful thoughts on men and soul. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 4
Topic
Men
Soul
Purpose
More From Walter Lippmann
A Free Press Is Not A Privilege But An Organic Necessity In A Great Society. Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern. For There Is No Adequate Way In Which It Can Keep Itself Informed About What The People Of The Country Are Thinking And Doing And Wanting.
Country
Intelligent
Thinking
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
The Predominant Teachings Of This Age Are That There Are No Limits To Man's Capacity To Govern Others And That, Therefore, No Limitations Ought To Be Imposed Upon Government. The Older Faith, Born Of Long Ages Of Suffering Under Man's Dominion Over Man, Was That The Exercise Of Unlimited Power By Men With Limited Minds And Self-regarding Prejudices Is Soon Oppressive, Reactionary, And Corrupt. The Older Faith Taught That The Very Condition Of Progress Was The Limitation Of Power To The Capacity And The Virtue Of Rulers.
Teaching
Exercise
Men
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
The Only Feeling That Anyone Can Have About An Event He Does Not Experience Is The Feeling Aroused By His Mental Image Of That Event ... For It Is Clear Enough That Under Certain Conditions Men Respond As Powerfully To Fictions As They Do To Realities.
Reality
Men
Feelings
A Really Good Diplomat Does Not Go In For Victories, Even When He Wins Them.
Success
Winning
Victory
He Has Honor If He Holds Himself To An Ideal Of Conduct Though It Is Inconvenient, Unprofitable, Or Dangerous To Do So.
Honor
Duty
Dangerous
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
The Public Must Be Put In Its Place, So That It May Exercise Its Own Powers, But No Less And Perhaps Even More, So That Each Of Us May Live Free Of The Trampling And The Roar Of A Bewildered Herd.
Exercise
May
Live Free
But What Is Propaganda, If Not The Effort To Alter The Picture To Which Men Respond, To Substitute One Social Pattern For Another?
Men
Effort
Patterns
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.
Country
Strong
Men
In Really Hard Times The Rules Of The Game Are Altered. The Inchoate Mass Begins To Stir. It Becomes Potent, And When It Strikes, It Strikes With Incredible Emphasis. Those Are The Rare Occasions When A National Will Emerges From The Scattered, Specialized, Or Indifferent Blocs Of Voters Who Ordinarily Elect The Politicians. Those Are For Good Or Evil The Great Occasions In A Nation's History.
Hard Times
Games
Evil
People Who Are Tremendously Concerned About Their Identification, Their Individuality, Their Self-expression, Or Their Sense Of Humor, Always Seem To Be Missing The Very Things They Pursue.
Self
Expression
People
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
Because The Results Are Expressed In Numbers, It Is Easy To Make The Mistake Of Thinking That The Intelligence Test Is A Measure Like A Foot Ruler Or A Pair Of Scales. It Is, Of Course, A Quite Different Sort Of Measure. Intelligence Is Not An Abstraction Like Length And Weight; It Is An Exceedingly Complicated Notion - Which Nobody Has Yet Succeeded In Defining.
Mistake
Thinking
Feet
The Search For Moral Guidance Which Shall Not Depend Upon External Authority Has Invariably Ended In The Acknowledgment Of Some New Authority.
Moral
Guidance
Authority
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
Where Mass Opinion Dominates The Government, There Is A Morbid Derangement Of The True Functions Of Power. The Derangement Brings About The Enfeeblement, Verging On Paralysis, Of The Capacity To Govern. This Breakdown In The Constitutional Order Is The Cause Of The Precipitate And Catastrophic Decline Of Western Society. It May, If It Cannot Be Arrested And Reversed, Bring About The Fall Of The West.
Fall
Government
Order
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.
Hymns
Majority
Minorities
It Has Been The Fashion To Speak Of The Conflict Between Human Rights And Property Rights, And From This It Has Come To Be Widely Believed That The Use Of Private Property Is Tainted With Evil And Should Not Be Espoused By Rational And Civilized Men... The Only Dependable Foundation Of Personal Liberty Is The Personal Economic Security Of Private Property. The Good Society.
Wisdom
Fashion
Men
Here Lay The Political Genius Of Franklin Roosevelt: That In His Own Time He Knew What Were The Questions That Had To Be Answered, Even Though He Himself Did Not Always Find The Full Answer.
Political
Genius
Answers
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 Function Of News Is To Signalize An Event, The Functionoftruth Istobring To Lightthehiddenfacts, Toset Them Into Relationwith Each Other, And Make A Picture Of Reality On Which Men Can Act.only At Those Points, Where Social Conditions Take Recognizable And Measurable Shape, Do The Body Of Truth And The Body Of News Coincide.
Reality
Men
Events
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.
Truth
Honesty
Simple
The Life Of A Savage Is Beset By Glowering Terrors: From Birth To Death He Lives In An Animated World; Where The Sun And The Stars, Sticks, Stones, And Rivers Are Obsessed With His Fate. He Is Busy All The Time In A Ritual Designed To Propitiate The Abounding Jealousies Of Nature. For His World Is Magical And Capricious, The Simplest Thing Is Occult.
Stars
Fate
Rivers
The Systems Of Stereotypes May Be The Core Of Our Personal Tradition, The Defenses Of Our Position In Society. They Are An Ordered More Or Less Consistent Picture Of The World, To Which Our Habits, Our Tastes, Our Capacities, Our Comforts And Our Hopes Have Adjusted Themselves. They May Not Be A Complete Picture Of The World, But They Are A Picture Of A Possible World To Which We Are Adapted. In That World, People And Things Have Their Well-known Places, And Do Certain Expected Things. We Feel At Home There. We Fit In. We Are Members.
Home
People
May
The Press Does Not Tell Us What To Think, It Tells Us What To Think About.
Thinking
Doe
Presses
At The Core Of Every Moral Code There Is A Picture Of Human Nature, A Map Of The Universe, And A Version Of History. To Human Nature (of The Sort Conceived), In A Universe (of The Kind Imagined), After A History (so Understood), The Rules Of The Code Apply.
Maps
Moral
Kind
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.
Men
Law
Desire
There Can Be No Higher Law In Journalism Than To Tell The Truth And To Shame The Devil.
Law
Devil
Journalism
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
Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.
Ideas
Furniture
Eternity
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.
Men
Thinking
Expression
I Demand From You In The Name Of Your Principles The Rights Which I Shall Deny To You Later In The Name Of My Principles.
Rights
Names
Principles
Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.
Intelligent
Government
Criticism
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
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
A Man Cannot Sleep In His Cradle: Whatever Is Useful Must In The Nature Of Life Become Useless.
Sleep
Men
Useless
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
True Opinions Can Prevail Only If The Facts To Which They Refer Are Known; If They Are Not Known, False Ideas Are Just As Effective As True Ones, If Not A Little More Effective.
Ideas
Justice
Littles
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
Very Few Established Institutions, Governments And Constitutions ...are Ever Destroyed By Their Enemies Until They Have Been Corrupted And Weakened By Their Friends.
Government
Enemy
Constitution
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
It Is Often Very Illuminating...to Ask Yourself How You Got At The Facts On Which You Base Your Opinion. Who Actually Saw, Heard, Felt, Counted, Named The Thing, About Which You Have An Opinion?
Saws
Facts
Opinion
A Man Who Has Humility Will Have Acquired In The Last Reaches Of His Beliefs The Saving Doubt Of His Own Certainty.
Humility
Pride
Men
It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.
War
Tests
Life Is
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.
Idols
Society
Looks
What A Myth Never Contains Is The Critical Power To Separate Its Truth From Its Errors.
Truth
Errors
Myth
Popular Government Has Not Yet Been Proved To Guarantee, Always And Everywhere, Good Government.
Government
Guarantees
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
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
Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.
Horse
Business
Genius
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.
Dream
Illumination
Might
In A Place Where Everybody Thinks Alike, Nobody Thinks Very Much.
Thinking
We Must Abandon The Notion That The People Govern. Instead, We Must Adopt The Theory That, By Their Occasional Mobilisations As A Majority, People Support Or Oppose The Individuals Who Actually Govern.
Freedom
People
Support
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.
Life
Drama
Thinking
Liberty Without Discipline Cannot Survive. Without Order And Authority In The Spirit Of Man The Free Way Of Life Leads Through Weakness, Disorganization, Self-indulgence, And Moral Indifference To The Destruction Of Freedom Itself. The Tragic Ordeal Through Which The Western World Is Passing Was Prepared In The Long Period Of Easy Liberty During Which Men Forgot The Elementary Truths Of Human Existence. They Forgot That Their Freedom Was Achieved By Heroic Sacrifice.
Life
Clever
Sacrifice
To Keep A Faith Pure, Man Had Better Retire To A Monastery.
Men
Monasteries
Retiring
Without Some Form Of Censorship, Propaganda In The Strict Sense Of The Word Is Impossible. In Order To Conduct Propaganda There Must Be Some Barrier Between The Public And The Event.
Order
Tyrants
Events
Unless Democracy Is To Commit Suicide By Consenting To Its Own Destruction, It Will Have To Find Some Formidable Answer To Those Who Come To It Saying: I Demand From You In The Name Of Your Principles The Rights Which I Shall Deny To You Later In The Name Of My Principles.
Suicide
Rights
Names
Every Fairly Intelligent Person Is Aware That The Price Of Respectability Is A Muffled Soul Bent On The Trivial And The Mediocre.
Intelligent
Soul
Bent
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 Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.
Travel
Adventure
Usa
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
We Say That The Truth Will Make Us Free. Yes, But That Truth Is A Thousand Truths Which Grow And Change.
Truth
Truth Is
Thousand
Where Love Exists With Self-respect And Joy, Where A Fine Environment Is Provided For The Child, Where The Parents Live Under Conditions That Neither Stunt The Imagination Nor Let It Run To Uncontrolled Fantasy, There You Have The Family That Modern Men Are Seeking To Create.
Running
Children
Men
Between Ourselves And Our Real Natures We Interpose That Wax Figure Of Idealizations And Selections Which We Call Our Character.
Real
Character
Personality
To Create A Minimum Standard Of Life Below Which No Human Being Can Fall Is The Most Elementary Duty Of The Democratic State.
Fall
States
Standards
If Somebody Can Create An Absolute System Of Beliefs And Rules Of Conduct That Will Guide A Business Man At Eleven O'clock In The Morning, A Boy Trying To Select A Career, A Woman In An Unhappy Love Affair--well Then, Surely No Pragmatist Will Object. He Insists Only That Philosophy Shall Come Down To Earth And Be Tried Out There.
Morning
Philosophy
Boys
We Must Remember That In Time Of War What Is Said On The Enemy's Side Of The Front Is Always Propaganda And What Is Said On Our Side Of The Front Is Truth And Righteousness, The Cause Of Humanity And A Crusade For Peace.
War
Cynical
Humanity
This Is One Of The Paradoxes Of The Democratic Movement - That It Loves A Crowd And Fears The Individuals Who Compose It - That The Religion Of Humanity Should Have No Faith In Human Beings.
Freedom
Should Have
Humanity
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.
Ocean
Men
Thinking
The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.
Mirrors
News
Social
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
Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.
Nonsense
Has Beens
We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.
Affair
Concerned
Public Affairs
You Don't Have To Preach Honesty To Men With Creative Purpose. Let A Human Being Throw The Engines Of His Soul Into The Making Of Something, And The Instinct Of Workmanship Will Take Care Of His Honesty.
Honesty
Men
Creative
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
You Cannot Endow Even The Best Machine With Initiative; The Jolliest Steamroller Will Not Plant Flowers.
Flower
Technology
Inspire
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 Command Fewer Words Than They Have Ideas To Express, And Language, As Jean Paul Said, Is A Dictionary Of Faded Metaphors.
Men
Ideas
Language
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.
Stars
Lying
Moving
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
Happiness Cannot Be The Reward Of Virtue; It Must Be The Intelligible Consequence Of It.
Rewards
Virtue
Consequence
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
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
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.
Honesty
Two
Credit
Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.
Freedom
Liberty
Libertarian
The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.
Men
Self
Invincible
Men Who Are Orthodox When They Are Young Are In Danger Of Being Middle-aged All Their Lives.
Men
Danger
Middle
Whether Or Not Birth Control Is Eugenic, Hygienic, And Economic, It Is The Most Revolutionary Practice In The History Of Sexual Morals.
Practice
Birth Control
Moral
While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.
Listening
Important
May
A Man Cannot Be A Good Doctor And Keep Telephoning His Broker Between Patients Nor A Good Lawyer With His Eye On The Ticker.
Eye
Men
Doctors
The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.
Angel
Lost Ones
Devil
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
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
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
In The Blood Of The Martyrs To Intolerance Are The Seeds Of Unbelief
Blood
Belief
Intolerance
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.
Party
Power
Should Have
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
The Private Citizen, Beset By Partisan Appeals For The Loan Of His Public Opinion, Will Soon See, Perhaps, That These Appeals Are Not A Compliment To His Intelligence, But An Imposition On His Good Nature And An Insult To His Sense Of Evidence.
Public Opinion
Citizens
Comeback
The Whole Speculation About Morality Is An Effort To Find A Way Of Living Which Men Who Live It Will Instinctively Feel Is Good.
Men
Effort
Way
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.
Progress
Use
Movement
The Justification Of Majority Rule In Politics Is Not To Be Found In Its Ethical Superiority.
Majority Rule
Politics
Ethical
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.
Education
Needs
Cost
When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.
Men
Theist
Humans
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.
Book
Communication
Men
Football Strategy Does Not Originate In A Scrimmage: It Is Useless To Expect Solutions In A Political Campaign.
Football
Political
Useless
Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.
Purpose
Genius
Firsts
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
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
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
Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.
Men
Personality
Lifetime
Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.
Organization
Public Opinion
Newspapers
Photographs Have The Kind Of Authority Over Imagination To-day, Which The Printed Word Had Yesterday, And The Spoken Word Before That. They Seem Utterly Real. They Come, We Imagine, Directly To Us Without Human Meddling, And They Are The Most Effortless Food For The Mind Conceivable.
Real
Printed Word
Yesterday
Whereas Each Man Claims His Freedom As A Matter Of Right, The Freedom He Accords To Other Men Is A Matter Of Toleration.
Men
Tolerance
Liberty
For The Most Part We Do Not First See, And Then Define, We Define First And Then See. In The Great Blooming, Buzzing Confusion Of The Outer World We Pick Out What Our Culture Has Already Defined For Us, And We Tend To Perceive That Which We Have Picked Out In The Form Stereotyped For Us By Our Culture.
Confusion
Culture
Blooming
In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.
Men
Differences
Used
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.
Records
Machines
Tradition
Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.
Men
Ideas
Immortal
When Philosophers Try To Be Politicians They Generally Cease To Be Philosophers.
Trying
Philosopher
Politician
We Must Protect The Right Of Our Opponents To Speak Because We Must Hear What They Have To Say.
Opponents
Civil Rights
Speak
There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.
Self
Two
Regal
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
The Essential Discovery Of Maturity Has Little If Anything To Do With Information About The Names, The Locations, And The Sequence Of Facts; It Is The Acquiring Of A Different Sense Of Life, A Different Kind Of Intuition About The Nature Of Things.
Maturity
Discovery
Names
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
There Is Nothing So Good For The Human Soul As The Discovery That There Are Ancient And Flourishing Civilized Societies Which Have Somehow Managed To Exist For Many Centuries And Are Still In Being Though They Have Had No Help From The Traveler In Solving Their Problems.
Travel
Discovery
Soul
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
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.
Average
Sea
Way
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
The Disesteem Into Which Moralists Have Fallen Is Due At Bottom To Their Failure To See That In An Age Like This One The Function Of The Moralist Is Not To Exhort Men To Be Good But To Elucidate What The Good Is. The Problem Of Sanctions Is Secondary.
Men
Age
Problem
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
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.
Looks
Sap
Opponents
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
Free Institutions Are Not The Property Of Any Majority. They Do Not Confer Upon Majorities Unlimited Powers. The Rights Of The Majority Are Limited Rights. They Are Limited Not Only By The Constitutional Guarantees But By The Moral Principle Implied In Those Guarantees. That Principle Is That Men May Not Use The Facilities Of Liberty To Impair Them. No Man May Invoke A Right In Order To Destroy It.
Men
Rights
Order
The Mass Of The Reading Public Is Not Interested In Learning And Assimilating The Results Of Accurate Investigation.
Reading
Results
Investigation
The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opposition Than From His Fervent Supporters.
Learning
Glowing
Politics
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
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
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
The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.
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
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
The News And The Truth Are Not The Same Thing.
News
It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor, To Argue The Rights Of Capital Than To See Its Results. Pretty Soon We Come To Think Of The Theories And Abstract Ideas As Things In Themselves.
Thinking
Rights
Ideas
No Amount Of Charters, Direct Primaries, Or Short Ballots Will Make A Democracy Out Of An Illiterate People.
Education
Hair
People
Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.
Understanding
Imaginative
Ideals
There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.
Lying
Mean
Community
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.
Peace
Wall
War
It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.
Crosses
Born
Skepticism
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
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
Franklin D. Roosevelt Is No Crusader. He Is No Tribune Of The People. He Is No Enemy Of Entrenched Privilege. He Is A Pleasant Man Who, Without Any Important Qualifications For The Office, Would Very Much Like To Be President.
Men
People
Office
There Is Nothing Disastrous In The Temporary Nature Of Our Ideas. They Are Always That. But There May Very Easily Be A Train Of Evil In The Self-deception Which Regards Them As Final. I Think God Will Forgive Us Our Skepticism Sooner Than Our Inquisitions.
Thinking
Self
Ideas
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
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
For In The Absence Of Debate Unrestricted Utterance Leads To The Degradation Of Opinion. By A Kind Of Greshams Law The More Rational Is Overcome By The Less Rational, And The Opinions That Will Prevail Will Be Those Which Are Held Most Ardently By Those With The Most Passionate Will. For That Reason The Freedom To Speak Can Never Be Maintained Merely By Objecting To Interference With The Liberty Of The Press, Of Printing, Of Broadcasting, Of The Screen. It Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Law
Liberty
Overcoming
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
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
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
Behind Innocence There Gathers A Clotted Mass Of Superstition, Of Twisted And Misdirected Impulse; Clandestine Flirtation, Fads, And Ragtime Fill The Unventilated Mind.
Mind
Fads
Superstitions
Usually It Is The Stereotyped Shape Assumed By An Event At An Obvious Place That Uncovers The Run Of The News.
Running
Events
News
It Is Not The Idea As Such Which The Censor Attacks, Whether It Be Heresy Or Radicalism Or Obscenity. He Attacks The Circulation Of The Idea Among The Classes Which In His Judgment Are Not To Be Trusted With The Idea.
Class
Ideas
Atheism
Run Against The Grain Of A Nation's Genius And See Where You Get With Your Laws.
Running
Law
Genius
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
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.
Past
Men
Records
The Study Of Error Is Not Only In The Highest Degree Prophylactic, But It Serves As A Stimulating Introduction To The Study Of Truth.
Mistake
Errors
Degrees
Democracy Is Much Too Important To Be Left To Public Opinion.
Democracy
Important
Public Opinion
Most Men, After A Little Freedom, Have Preferred Authority With The Consoling Assurances And The Economy Of Effort It Brings.
Freedom
Men
Effort
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
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 True Speech Of Man Is Idiomatic, If Not Of The Earth And Sky, Then At Least Of The Saloon And The Bleachers.
Men
Sky
Earth
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
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
It Is Easier To Develop Great Power Than It Is To Know How To Use It Wisely.
Use
Easier
Great Power
Men Can Know More Than Their Ancestors Did If They Start With A Knowledge Of What Their Ancestors Had Already Learned....that Is Why A Society Can Be Progressive Only If It Conserves Its Traditions.
Men
Tradition
Progressive
When A Man And Woman Are Successfully In Love, Their Whole Activity Is Energized And Victorious. They Walk Better, Their Digestion Improves, They Think More Clearly, Their Secret Worries Drop Away, The World Is Fresh And Interesting, And They Can Do More Than They Dreamed That They Could Do. In Love Of This Kind Sexual Intimacy Is Not The Dead End Of Desire As It Is In Romantic Or Promiscuous Love, But Periodic Affirmation Of The Inward Delight Of Desire Pervading An Active Life.
Men
Thinking
Interesting
Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.
Sex
Satisfied
Ifs
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
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
All Men Desire Their Own Perfect Adjustment, But They Desire It, Being Finite Men, On Their Own Terms.
Men
Perfect
Desire
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
Corrupt, Stupid Grasping Functionaries Will Make At Least As Big A Muddle Of Socialism As Stupid, Selfish And Acquisitive Employers Can Make Of Capitalism.
Selfish
Stupid
Socialism
Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.
Character
Politics
Journalism
There Is Nothing So Bad But It Can Masquerade As Moral.
Ethics
Morality
Moral
The Function Of News Is To Signalize An Event, The Function Of Truth Is To Bring To Light The Hidden Facts, To Set Them In Relation With Each Other, And Make A Picture Of Reality On Which Men Can Act.
Reality
Men
Light
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 Public Interest May Be Presumed To Be What Men Would Choose If They Saw Clearly, Thought Rationally, Acted Disinterestedly And Benevolently.
Men
May
Saws
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
To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.
Love
Forgiveness
Understanding
In A Free Society The State Does Not Administer The Affairs Of Men. It Administers Justice Among Men Who Conduct Their Own Affairs.
Men
Justice
Liberty
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
Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.
New York
Men
Self
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 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.
People
Wish
Mountain
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.
War
Mind
Behind The Scenes
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
Trending Author
Ted Nugent
Adam Lambert
Bjork
Gregory Bateson
Vladimir Kramnik
Lee Myung-bak
Category
Information