Background Image

...

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.

-Walter Lippmann

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

What The Public Does

Walter Lippmann

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Walter Lippmann

Happiness Cannot Be The Reward Of Virtue; It Must Be The Intelligible Consequence Of It.

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.

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.

The Mass Of The Reading Public Is Not Interested In Learning And Assimilating The Results Of Accurate Investigation.

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

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 Democracy Which Fails To Concentrate Authority In An Emergency Inevitably Falls Into Such Confusion That The Ground Is Prepared For The Rise Of A Dictator.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.

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

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.

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.

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

Between Ourselves And Our Real Natures We Interpose That Wax Figure Of Idealizations And Selections Which We Call Our Character.

Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.

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.

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.

Most Men, After A Little Freedom, Have Preferred Authority With The Consoling Assurances And The Economy Of Effort It Brings.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.

To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nobody Has Yet Found A Way Of Bombing That Can Prevent Foot Soldiers From Walking.

Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.

Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The True Speech Of Man Is Idiomatic, If Not Of The Earth And Sky, Then At Least Of The Saloon And The Bleachers.

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

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.

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?

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.

Men Command Fewer Words Than They Have Ideas To Express, And Language, As Jean Paul Said, Is A Dictionary Of Faded Metaphors.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

The Present Crisis Of Western Democracy Is A Crisis In Journalism.

Behind Innocence There Gathers A Clotted Mass Of Superstition, Of Twisted And Misdirected Impulse; Clandestine Flirtation, Fads, And Ragtime Fill The Unventilated Mind.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.

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.

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.

The Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.

When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.

Democracy Is Much Too Important To Be Left To Public Opinion.

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.

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

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.

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

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

It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.

Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Final Test Of A Leader Is That He Leaves Behind Him In Other Men The Conviction And The Will To Carry On.

In A Place Where Everybody Thinks Alike, Nobody Thinks Very Much.

A Man Cannot Sleep In His Cradle: Whatever Is Useful Must In The Nature Of Life Become Useless.

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.

Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.

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

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.

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

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

When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking

Funny Inspirational

Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.

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.

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

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

You Cannot Endow Even The Best Machine With Initiative; The Jolliest Steamroller Will Not Plant Flowers.

Whether Or Not Birth Control Is Eugenic, Hygienic, And Economic, It Is The Most Revolutionary Practice In The History Of Sexual Morals.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.

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.

There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.

Men Fall Into A Routine When They Are Tired And Slack: It Has All The Appearance Of Activity With Few Of Its Burdens.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.

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.

Whenever We Accept An Idea As Authority Instead Of As Instrument, An Idol Is Set Up. We Worship The Plough, And Not The Fruit.

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.

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

Corrupt, Stupid Grasping Functionaries Will Make At Least As Big A Muddle Of Socialism As Stupid, Selfish And Acquisitive Employers Can Make Of Capitalism.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Man Cannot Be A Good Doctor And Keep Telephoning His Broker Between Patients Nor A Good Lawyer With His Eye On The Ticker.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Brains, You Know, Are Suspect In The Republican Party.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Congratulations

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.

When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.

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.

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.

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 Each Other

Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.

Certainly He Is Not Of The Generation That Regards Honesty As The Best Policy. However, He Does Regard It As A Policy.

Once You Touch The Biographies Of Human Beings, The Notion That Political Beliefs Are Logically Determined Collapses Like A Pricked Balloon.

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.

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

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

Lives Of Others

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.

The News And The Truth Are Not The Same Thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Behind The Scenes

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.

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.

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

To Create A Minimum Standard Of Life Below Which No Human Being Can Fall Is The Most Elementary Duty Of The Democratic State.

In The Blood Of The Martyrs To Intolerance Are The Seeds Of Unbelief

The Balancing Of Present Wants Against The Future Is Really The Central Problem Of Ethics.

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.

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

A Man Who Has Humility Will Have Acquired In The Last Reaches Of His Beliefs The Saving Doubt Of His Own Certainty.

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.

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.

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.

Trending Author

Langston Hughes

Johnny Knoxville

Category