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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.
-Walter Lippmann
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This Is One Of

Walter Lippmann
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.
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Topic
Freedom
Should Have
Humanity
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We Are All Captives Of The Picture In Our Head - Our Belief That The World We Have Experienced Is The World That Really Exists.
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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.
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Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The True Speech Of Man Is Idiomatic, If Not Of The Earth And Sky, Then At Least Of The Saloon And The Bleachers.
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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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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 Present Crisis Of Western Democracy Is A Crisis In Journalism.
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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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The Central Drama Of Our Age Is How The Western Nations And The Asian Peoples Are To Find A Tolerable Basis Of Co-existence.
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Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.
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There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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A Large Plural Society Cannot Be Governed Without Recognizing That, Transcending Its Plural Interests, There Is A Rational Order With A Superior Common Law.
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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.
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There Is Nothing So Bad But It Can Masquerade As Moral.
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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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The Smashing Of Idols Is In Itself Such A Preoccupation That It Is Almost Impossible For The Iconoclast To Look Clearly Into A Future When There Will Not Be Many Idols Left To Smash.
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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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Nobody Has Yet Found A Way Of Bombing That Can Prevent Foot Soldiers From Walking.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.
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All Achievement Should Be Measured In Human Happiness.
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It Is Better To Catch The Idol-maker Than To Smash Each Idol.
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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.
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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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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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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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It Is Easier To Develop Great Power Than It Is To Know How To Use It Wisely.
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No Amount Of Charters, Direct Primaries, Or Short Ballots Will Make A Democracy Out Of An Illiterate People.
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Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.
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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.
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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.
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The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.
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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.
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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.
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Whenever We Accept An Idea As Authority Instead Of As Instrument, An Idol Is Set Up. We Worship The Plough, And Not The Fruit.
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There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.
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When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.
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Many A Time I Have Wanted To Stop Talking And Find Out What I Really Believed.
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The Balancing Of Present Wants Against The Future Is Really The Central Problem Of Ethics.
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In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.
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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.
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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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It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor.
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A Man Cannot Be A Good Doctor And Keep Telephoning His Broker Between Patients Nor A Good Lawyer With His Eye On The Ticker.
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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.
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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.
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Men Fall Into A Routine When They Are Tired And Slack: It Has All The Appearance Of Activity With Few Of Its Burdens.
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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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The Genius Of A Good Leader Is To Leave Behind Him A Situation Which Common Sense, Without The Grace Of Genius, Can Deal With Successfully.
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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.
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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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But What Is Propaganda, If Not The Effort To Alter The Picture To Which Men Respond, To Substitute One Social Pattern For Another?
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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.
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The Size Of A Man's Income Has Considerable Effect On His Access To The World Beyond His Neighborhood. With Money He Can Overcome Almost Every Tangible Obstacle Of Communication, He Can Travel, Buy Books And Periodicals, And Bring Within The Range Of His Attention Almost Any Known Fact Of The World.
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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.
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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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When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.
Thinking
When Everyone Thinks Alike, No One Thinks Very Much.
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The Study Of Error Is Not Only In The Highest Degree Prophylactic, But It Serves As A Stimulating Introduction To The Study Of Truth.
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Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.
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I Do Not Despise Genius-indeed, I Wish I Had A Basketful Of It. But Yet, After A Great Deal Of Experience And Observation, I Have Become Convinced That Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius. It May Never Carry Any Man As Far As Genius Has Carried Individuals, But Industry-patient, Steady, Intelligent Industry-will Carry Thousands Into Comfort, And Even Celebrity; And This It Does With Absolute Certainty.
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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.
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It Requires Wisdom To Understand Wisdom: The Music Is Nothing If The Audience Is Deaf.
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Music
The Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.
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Thinking
There Is But One Bond Of Peace That Is Both Permanent And Enriching: The Increasing Knowledge Of The World In Which Experiment Occurs.
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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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What Each Man Does Is Based Not On Direct And Certain Knowledge, But On Pictures Made By Himself Or Given To Him...
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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.
Men
Average
Faces
When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking
Success
Funny Inspirational
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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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Public Opinion
Newspapers
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
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
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The Consent Of The Governed" Is More Than A Safeguard Against Ignorant Tyrants: It Is An Insurance Against Benevolent Despots As Well.
Tyrants
Ignorant
Democracy
Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.
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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.
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Ignore What A Man Desires And You Ignore The Very Source Of His Power.
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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.
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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.
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Names
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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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Men
Essence
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
To Keep A Faith Pure, Man Had Better Retire To A Monastery.
Men
Monasteries
Retiring
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
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 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 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
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
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
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
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
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
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
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
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
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.
Men
Soul
Purpose
A State Is Absolute In The Sense Which I Have In Mind When It Claims The Right To A Monopoly Of All The Force Within The Community, To Make War, To Make Peace, To Conscript Life, To Tax, To Establish And Disestablish Property, To Define Crime, To Punish Disobedience, To Control Education, To Supervise The Family, To Regulate Personal Habits, And To Censor Opinions. The Modern State Claims All Of These Powers, And, In The Matter Of Theory, There Is No Real Difference In The Size Of The Claim Between Communists, Fascists, And Democrats.
Real
War
Differences
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
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
The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.
Mirrors
News
Social
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
Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.
Ideas
Furniture
Eternity
Most Men, After A Little Freedom, Have Preferred Authority With The Consoling Assurances And The Economy Of Effort It Brings.
Freedom
Men
Effort
Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.
Nonsense
Has Beens
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
Brains, You Know, Are Suspect In The Republican Party.
Funny
Humorous
Party
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
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
The Press Does Not Tell Us What To Think, It Tells Us What To Think About.
Thinking
Doe
Presses
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 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.
Men
Rights
People
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
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created. The Average Conservative Is A Slave To The Most Incidental And Trivial Part Of His Forefathers Glory - To The Archaic Formula Which Happened To Express Their Genius Or The Eighteenth-century Contrivance By Which For A Time It Was Served.
Average
Genius
Machines
The Man Who Raises New Issues Has Always Been Distasteful To Politicians. He Musses Up What Had Been So Tidily Arranged.
Men
Issues
Politician
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
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.
War
Purpose
Plans
We Must Protect The Right Of Our Opponents To Speak Because We Must Hear What They Have To Say.
Opponents
Civil Rights
Speak
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
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
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
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
It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.
Crosses
Born
Skepticism
Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.
New York
Men
Self
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
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.
Writing
Men
Thinking
When Philosophers Try To Be Politicians They Generally Cease To Be Philosophers.
Trying
Philosopher
Politician
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 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
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
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
Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.
Horse
Business
Genius
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
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
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
Between Ourselves And Our Real Natures We Interpose That Wax Figure Of Idealizations And Selections Which We Call Our Character.
Real
Character
Personality
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
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
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
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
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.
Real
Men
House
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
Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.
Past
Men
Records
Popular Government Has Not Yet Been Proved To Guarantee, Always And Everywhere, Good Government.
Government
Guarantees
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
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 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.
Horse
Government
Play
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
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
Life Is An Irreversible Process And For That Reason Its Future Can Never Be A Repetition Of The Past.
Past
Opinion
Life Is
To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.
Love
Forgiveness
Understanding
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
It Is Perfectly True That That Government Is Best Which Governs Least. It Is Equally True That That Government Is Best Which Provides Most.
Government
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
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 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
While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.
Listening
Important
May
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 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
The Mass Of The Reading Public Is Not Interested In Learning And Assimilating The Results Of Accurate Investigation.
Reading
Results
Investigation
The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.
Angel
Lost Ones
Devil
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
The Unions Are The First Feeble Effort To Conquer The Industrial Jungle For Democratic Life. They May Not Succeed, But If They Don't Their Failure Will Be A Tragedy For Civilization, A Loss Of Cooperative Effort, A Baulking Of Energy, And The Fixing In American Life Of A Class-structure.
Loss
Civilization
Class
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
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
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
Though It Is Disguised By The Illusion That A Bureaucracy Accountable To A Majority Of Voters, And Susceptible To The Pressure Of Organized Minorities, Is Not Exercising Compulsion, It Is Evident That The More Varied And Comprehensive The Regulation Becomes, The More The State Becomes A Despotic Power As Against The Individual. For The Fragment Of Control Over The Government Which He Exercises Through His Vote Is In No Effective Sense Proportionate To The Authority Exercised Over Him By The Government.
Exercise
Government
Minorities
There Is No Arguing With The Pretenders To A Divine Knowledge And To A Divine Mission. They Are Possessed With The Sin Of Pride, They Have Yielded To The Perennial Temptation.
Pride
Temptation
Arguing
The 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
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
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
Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.
Purpose
Genius
Firsts
A Really Good Diplomat Does Not Go In For Victories, Even When He Wins Them.
Success
Winning
Victory
We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.
Affair
Concerned
Public Affairs
Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.
Understanding
Imaginative
Ideals
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
The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Success Makes Men Rigid And They Tend To Exalt Stability Over All The Other Virtues; Tired Of The Effort Of Willing They Become Fanatics About Conservatism.
Success
Congratulations
Tired
The Justification Of Majority Rule In Politics Is Not To Be Found In Its Ethical Superiority.
Majority Rule
Politics
Ethical
The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
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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