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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
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Since My Moral System

Walter Lippmann
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.
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Fashion
Men
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
The News And The Truth Are Not The Same Thing.
News
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
The First Principle Of A Civilized State Is That Power Is Legitimate Only When It Is Under Contract.
Power
Principles
Firsts
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
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
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
Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.
Understanding
Imaginative
Ideals
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
While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.
Listening
Important
May
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
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
It Is All Very Well To Talk About Being The Captain Of Your Soul. It Is Hard, And Only A Few Heroes, Saints, And Geniuses Have Been The Captains Of Their Souls For Any Extended Period Of Their Lives.
Hero
Ambition
Soul
Men Who Are Orthodox When They Are Young Are In Danger Of Being Middle-aged All Their Lives.
Men
Danger
Middle
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
We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.
Affair
Concerned
Public Affairs
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
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 Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.
Time
Men
Thinking
All Men Desire Their Own Perfect Adjustment, But They Desire It, Being Finite Men, On Their Own Terms.
Men
Perfect
Desire
It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.
Men
Law
Desire
Popular Government Has Not Yet Been Proved To Guarantee, Always And Everywhere, Good Government.
Government
Guarantees
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
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
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
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
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
If All Power Is In The People, If There Is No Higher Law Than Their Will, And If By Counting Their Votes, Their Will May Be Ascertained - Then The People May Entrust All Their Power To Anyone, And The Power Of The Pretender And The Usurper Is Then Legitimate. It Is Not To Be Challenged Since It Came Originally From The Sovereign People.
Power
Law
People
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
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
Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.
Past
Men
Records
It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor.
Thinking
Poverty
Poor
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
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
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 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 All Captives Of The Picture In Our Head - Our Belief That The World We Have Experienced Is The World That Really Exists.
World
Belief
Captives
When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.
Men
Theist
Humans
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 Better To Catch The Idol-maker Than To Smash Each Idol.
Idols
Makers
Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.
Intelligent
Government
Criticism
Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.
Men
Ideas
Immortal
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
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
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
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
In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.
Men
Differences
Used
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
Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.
Organization
Public Opinion
Newspapers
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
Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.
Purpose
Genius
Firsts
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
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
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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