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

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

Understanding the Quote: "there can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the..."

This quote by Walter Lippmann reflects deeply on the theme of law. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Law, Devil, Journalism, 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 law and devil. 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.

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There Can Be No Higher Law In Journalism Than To Tell The Truth And To Shame The Devil.
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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.
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A Man Cannot Sleep In His Cradle: Whatever Is Useful Must In The Nature Of Life Become Useless.
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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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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.
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In A Place Where Everybody Thinks Alike, Nobody Thinks Very Much.
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The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opponents Than From His Fervent Supporters. For His Supporters Will Push Him To Disaster Unless His Opponents Show Him Where The Dangers Are. So If He Is Wise He Will Often Pray To Be Delivered From His Friends, Because They Will Ruin Him. But Though It Hurts, He Ought Also To Pray Never To Be Left Without Opponents; For They Keep Him On The Path Of Reason And Good Sense.
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The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opposition Than From His Fervent Supporters.
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Whether Or Not Birth Control Is Eugenic, Hygienic, And Economic, It Is The Most Revolutionary Practice In The History Of Sexual Morals.
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Certainly He Is Not Of The Generation That Regards Honesty As The Best Policy. However, He Does Regard It As A Policy.
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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.
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A Really Good Diplomat Does Not Go In For Victories, Even When He Wins Them.
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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.
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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.
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Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.
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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.
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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.
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Many A Time I Have Wanted To Stop Talking And Find Out What I Really Believed.
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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.
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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.
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You And I Are Forever At The Mercy Of The Census-taker And The Census-maker. That Impertinent Fellow Who Goes From House To House Is One Of The Real Masters Of The Statistical Situation. The Other Is The Man Who Organizes The Results.
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Very Few Established Institutions, Governments And Constitutions ...are Ever Destroyed By Their Enemies Until They Have Been Corrupted And Weakened By Their Friends.
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Behind Innocence There Gathers A Clotted Mass Of Superstition, Of Twisted And Misdirected Impulse; Clandestine Flirtation, Fads, And Ragtime Fill The Unventilated Mind.
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We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.
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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.
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To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To Create A Minimum Standard Of Life Below Which No Human Being Can Fall Is The Most Elementary Duty Of The Democratic State.
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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.
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Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.
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Whereas Each Man Claims His Freedom As A Matter Of Right, The Freedom He Accords To Other Men Is A Matter Of Toleration.
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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.
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A Man Who Has Humility Will Have Acquired In The Last Reaches Of His Beliefs The Saving Doubt Of His Own Certainty.
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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.
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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.
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The Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.
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It Was In The Recognition That There Is In Each Man A Final Essence, That Is To Say An Immortal Soul Which Only God Can Judge, That A Limit Was Set Upon The Dominion Of Men Over Men.
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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?
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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.
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The Search For Moral Guidance Which Shall Not Depend Upon External Authority Has Invariably Ended In The Acknowledgment Of Some New Authority.
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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.
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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.
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The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.
When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.
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The Bill Of Rights Does Not Come From The People And Is Not Subject To Change By Majorities. It Comes From The Nature Of Things. It Declares The Inalienable Rights Of Man Not Only Against All Government But Also Against The People Collectively.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Best Servants Of The People, Like The Best Valets, Must Whisper Unpleasant Truths In The Master's Ear. It Is The Court Fool, Not The Foolish Courtier, Whom The King Can Least Afford To Lose.
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I Generalized Rashly: That Is What Kills Political Writing, This Absurd Pretence That You Are Delivering A Great Utterance. You Never Do. You Are Just A Puzzled Man Making Notes About What You Think. You Are Not Building The Pantheon, Then Why Act Like A Graven Image? You Are Drawing Sketches In The Sand Which The Sea Will Wash Away.
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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.
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Happiness Cannot Be The Reward Of Virtue; It Must Be The Intelligible Consequence Of It.
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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.
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Once You Touch The Biographies Of Human Beings, The Notion That Political Beliefs Are Logically Determined Collapses Like A Pricked Balloon.
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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.
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Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.
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When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.
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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.
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Genius
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.
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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.
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The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.
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Self
Invincible
There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.
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Two
Regal
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.
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Honesty
Simple
When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking
Success
Funny Inspirational
Creativity
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
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
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
Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.
Sex
Satisfied
Ifs
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
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
It Requires Wisdom To Understand Wisdom: The Music Is Nothing If The Audience Is Deaf.
Inspirational
Positive
Music
Brains, You Know, Are Suspect In The Republican Party.
Funny
Humorous
Party
In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.
Men
Differences
Used
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
It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.
War
Tests
Life Is
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
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
It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.
Men
Law
Desire
Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.
Character
Politics
Journalism
The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.
Mirrors
News
Social
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
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
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
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
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
Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.
Purpose
Genius
Firsts
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 First Principle Of A Civilized State Is That Power Is Legitimate Only When It Is Under Contract.
Power
Principles
Firsts
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
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
The Mass Of The Reading Public Is Not Interested In Learning And Assimilating The Results Of Accurate Investigation.
Reading
Results
Investigation
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
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
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
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
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
An Alliance Is Like A Chain. It Is Not Made Stronger By Adding Weak Links To It. A Great Power Like The United States Gains No Advantage And It Loses Prestige By Offering, Indeed Peddling, Its Alliances To All And Sundry. An Alliance Should Be Hard Diplomatic Currency, Valuable And Hard To Get, And Not Inflationary Paper From The Mimeograph Machine In The State Department.
Offering
Stronger
Links
What A Myth Never Contains Is The Critical Power To Separate Its Truth From Its Errors.
Truth
Errors
Myth
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
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
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
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
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
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
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
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
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
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
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
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
Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.
Nonsense
Has Beens
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
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
There Is But One Bond Of Peace That Is Both Permanent And Enriching: The Increasing Knowledge Of The World In Which Experiment Occurs.
Peace
World
Increasing Knowledge
Run Against The Grain Of A Nation's Genius And See Where You Get With Your Laws.
Running
Law
Genius
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
So Far As I Am Concerned I Have No Doctrinaire Belief In Free Speech. In The Interest Of The War It Is Necessary To Sacrifice Some Of It.
War
Sacrifice
Speech
The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.
Travel
Adventure
Usa
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
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
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
It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.
Crosses
Born
Skepticism
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
Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.
New York
Men
Self
The Press Does Not Tell Us What To Think, It Tells Us What To Think About.
Thinking
Doe
Presses
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
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
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
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
Democracy Is Much Too Important To Be Left To Public Opinion.
Democracy
Important
Public Opinion
Men Who Are Orthodox When They Are Young Are In Danger Of Being Middle-aged All Their Lives.
Men
Danger
Middle
Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.
Intelligent
Government
Criticism
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
It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor.
Thinking
Poverty
Poor
Where There Is No Danger Of Overt Action There Is Rarely Any Interference With Freedom. That Is Why There Has So Often Been Amazing Freedom Of Opinion Within An Aristocratic Class Which At The Same Time Sanctioned The Ruthless Suppression Of Heterodox Opinion Among The Common People. When The Inquisition Was Operating Most Effectively Against The Bourgeois Who Had Lapsed Into Heresy, The Princes Of The Church And The Nobles Enjoyed The Freedom Of The Renaissance.
Class
People
Church
Whenever We Accept An Idea As Authority Instead Of As Instrument, An Idol Is Set Up. We Worship The Plough, And Not The Fruit.
Idols
Ideas
Fruit
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
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
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
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 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
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
The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.
Angel
Lost Ones
Devil
Most Men, After A Little Freedom, Have Preferred Authority With The Consoling Assurances And The Economy Of Effort It Brings.
Freedom
Men
Effort
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
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
Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.
Ideas
Creative
Insecurity
The Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.
Time
Men
Thinking
Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.
Freedom
Liberty
Libertarian
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 Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
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
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