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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.

-Walter Lippmann

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The Predominant Teachings Of

Walter Lippmann

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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.

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When Philosophers Try To Be Politicians They Generally Cease To Be Philosophers.

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Funny Inspirational

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Behind The Scenes

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Men Who Are Orthodox When They Are Young Are In Danger Of Being Middle-aged All Their Lives.

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Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.

We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.

Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.

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.

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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.

Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.

It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.

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.

The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.

It Is Easier To Develop Great Power Than It Is To Know How To Use It Wisely.

There Can Be No Higher Law In Journalism Than To Tell The Truth And To Shame The Devil.

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.

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.

Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.

Ignore What A Man Desires And You Ignore The Very Source Of His Power.

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.

The Central Drama Of Our Age Is How The Western Nations And The Asian Peoples Are To Find A Tolerable Basis Of Co-existence.

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.

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.

The Study Of Error Is Not Only In The Highest Degree Prophylactic, But It Serves As A Stimulating Introduction To The Study Of Truth.

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.

He Has Honor If He Holds Himself To An Ideal Of Conduct Though It Is Inconvenient, Unprofitable, Or Dangerous To Do So.

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.

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.

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.

Usually It Is The Stereotyped Shape Assumed By An Event At An Obvious Place That Uncovers The Run Of The News.

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.

We Are All Captives Of The Picture In Our Head - Our Belief That The World We Have Experienced Is The World That Really Exists.

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.

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.

The Public Interest May Be Presumed To Be What Men Would Choose If They Saw Clearly, Thought Rationally, Acted Disinterestedly And Benevolently.

No Amount Of Charters, Direct Primaries, Or Short Ballots Will Make A Democracy Out Of An Illiterate People.

What Each Man Does Is Based Not On Direct And Certain Knowledge, But On Pictures Made By Himself Or Given To Him...

There Is Nothing So Bad But It Can Masquerade As Moral.

The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.

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.

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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.

The First Principle Of A Civilized State Is That Power Is Legitimate Only When It Is Under Contract.

Every Man Whose Business It Is To Think Knows That He Must For Part Of The Day Create About Himself A Pool Of Silence.

Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.

In A Free Society The State Does Not Administer The Affairs Of Men. It Administers Justice Among Men Who Conduct Their Own Affairs.

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.

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.

The Man Who Raises New Issues Has Always Been Distasteful To Politicians. He Musses Up What Had Been So Tidily Arranged.

Popular Government Has Not Yet Been Proved To Guarantee, Always And Everywhere, Good Government.

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.

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.

The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.

All Men Desire Their Own Perfect Adjustment, But They Desire It, Being Finite Men, On Their Own Terms.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Search For Moral Guidance Which Shall Not Depend Upon External Authority Has Invariably Ended In The Acknowledgment Of Some New Authority.

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.

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.

It Requires Wisdom To Understand Wisdom: The Music Is Nothing If The Audience Is Deaf.

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.

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.

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.

It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.

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.

There Is But One Bond Of Peace That Is Both Permanent And Enriching: The Increasing Knowledge Of The World In Which Experiment Occurs.

Increasing Knowledge

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.

In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.

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.

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.

The Whole Speculation About Morality Is An Effort To Find A Way Of Living Which Men Who Live It Will Instinctively Feel Is Good.

All Achievement Should Be Measured In Human Happiness.

Run Against The Grain Of A Nation's Genius And See Where You Get With Your Laws.

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.

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.

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.

Very Few Established Institutions, Governments And Constitutions ...are Ever Destroyed By Their Enemies Until They Have Been Corrupted And Weakened By Their Friends.

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.

But What Is Propaganda, If Not The Effort To Alter The Picture To Which Men Respond, To Substitute One Social Pattern For Another?

We Say That The Truth Will Make Us Free. Yes, But That Truth Is A Thousand Truths Which Grow And Change.

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.

A Large Plural Society Cannot Be Governed Without Recognizing That, Transcending Its Plural Interests, There Is A Rational Order With A Superior Common Law.

The Consent Of The Governed" Is More Than A Safeguard Against Ignorant Tyrants: It Is An Insurance Against Benevolent Despots As Well.

There Comes A Time When Even The Reformer Is Compelled To Face The Fairly Widespread Suspicion Of The Average Man That Politics Is An Exhibition In Which There Is Much Ado About Nothing.

There Is Only One Purpose To Which A Whole Society Can Be Directed By A Deliberate Plan. That Purpose Is War, And There Is No Other.

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.

Love Endures When The Lovers Love Many Things Together And Not Merely Each Other.

Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.

The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.

Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.

Lives Of Others

Whereas Each Man Claims His Freedom As A Matter Of Right, The Freedom He Accords To Other Men Is A Matter Of Toleration.

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.

A Really Good Diplomat Does Not Go In For Victories, Even When He Wins Them.

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.

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.

What A Myth Never Contains Is The Critical Power To Separate Its Truth From Its Errors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opposition Than From His Fervent Supporters.

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.

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.

The Justification Of Majority Rule In Politics Is Not To Be Found In Its Ethical Superiority.

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.

Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.

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.

Life Is An Irreversible Process And For That Reason Its Future Can Never Be A Repetition Of The Past.

When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.

Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.

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.

The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.

The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.

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.

It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor.

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