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While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.
-Walter Lippmann
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While The Right To

Walter Lippmann
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While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.

Understanding the Quote: "while the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the..."

This quote by Walter Lippmann reflects deeply on the theme of listening. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Listening, Important, May, 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 listening and important. 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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Topic
Listening
Important
May
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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.
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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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Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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Corrupt, Stupid Grasping Functionaries Will Make At Least As Big A Muddle Of Socialism As Stupid, Selfish And Acquisitive Employers Can Make Of Capitalism.
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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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He Has Honor If He Holds Himself To An Ideal Of Conduct Though It Is Inconvenient, Unprofitable, Or Dangerous To Do So.
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Since My Moral System Rests On My Accepted Version Of The Facts, He Who Denies My Moral Judgments Or My Version Of The Facts, Is To Me Perverse, Alien, Dangerous. How Shall I Account For Him? The Opponent Has Always To Be Explained, And The Last Explanation That We Ever Look For Is That He Sees A Different Set Of Facts. Such An Explanation We Avoid, Because It Saps The Very Foundation Of Our Own Assurance That We Have Seen Life Steadily And Seen It Whole.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.
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While The Right To Talk May Be The Beginning Of Freedom, The Necessity Of Listening Is What Makes That Right Important.
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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.
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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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Love Endures When The Lovers Love Many Things Together And Not Merely Each Other.
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Kind
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Used
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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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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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 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.
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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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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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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.
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Ignore What A Man Desires And You Ignore The Very Source Of His Power.
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When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.
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Earth
To Create A Minimum Standard Of Life Below Which No Human Being Can Fall Is The Most Elementary Duty Of The Democratic State.
Fall
States
Standards
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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Ideas
You Cannot Endow Even The Best Machine With Initiative; The Jolliest Steamroller Will Not Plant Flowers.
Flower
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Inspire
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 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
Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.
Freedom
Liberty
Libertarian
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
Whether Or Not Birth Control Is Eugenic, Hygienic, And Economic, It Is The Most Revolutionary Practice In The History Of Sexual Morals.
Practice
Birth Control
Moral
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.
Fall
Confusion
Democracy
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
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
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
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
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.
Records
Machines
Tradition
The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.
Travel
Adventure
Usa
Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.
New York
Men
Self
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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Civilization
Names
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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Printed Word
Yesterday
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
When Philosophers Try To Be Politicians They Generally Cease To Be Philosophers.
Trying
Philosopher
Politician
Usually It Is The Stereotyped Shape Assumed By An Event At An Obvious Place That Uncovers The Run Of The News.
Running
Events
News
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
The World Is A Better Place To Live In Because It Contains Human Beings Who Will Give Up Ease And Security In Order To Do What They Themselves Think Worth Doing. They Do The Useless, Brave, Noble, Divinely Foolish, And The Very Wisest Things That Are Done By Man. And What They Prove To Themselves And To Others Is That Man Is No Mere Creature Of His Habits, No Automaton In His Routine, But That In The Dust Of Which He Is Made There Is Also Fire, Lighted Now And Then By Great Winds From The Sky.
Giving Up
Men
Thinking
It Is So Much Easier To Talk Of Poverty Than To Think Of The Poor.
Thinking
Poverty
Poor
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
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
Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.
Character
Politics
Journalism
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
To Keep A Faith Pure, Man Had Better Retire To A Monastery.
Men
Monasteries
Retiring
Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.
Inspirational
Vices
Failing
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
To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.
Love
Forgiveness
Understanding
A Man Cannot Sleep In His Cradle: Whatever Is Useful Must In The Nature Of Life Become Useless.
Sleep
Men
Useless
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
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.
Mistake
Thinking
Feet
Many A Time I Have Wanted To Stop Talking And Find Out What I Really Believed.
Life
Thoughtful
Talking
The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.
Angel
Lost Ones
Devil
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.
Horse
Intelligent
Men
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
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
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
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
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
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.
Wise
Hurt
Opponents
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
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
The Systems Of Stereotypes May Be The Core Of Our Personal Tradition, The Defenses Of Our Position In Society. They Are An Ordered More Or Less Consistent Picture Of The World, To Which Our Habits, Our Tastes, Our Capacities, Our Comforts And Our Hopes Have Adjusted Themselves. They May Not Be A Complete Picture Of The World, But They Are A Picture Of A Possible World To Which We Are Adapted. In That World, People And Things Have Their Well-known Places, And Do Certain Expected Things. We Feel At Home There. We Fit In. We Are Members.
Home
People
May
The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
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
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 Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.
Business
Simple
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
The Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.
Time
Men
Thinking
It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.
Men
Law
Desire
There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.
Lying
Mean
Community
Football Strategy Does Not Originate In A Scrimmage: It Is Useless To Expect Solutions In A Political Campaign.
Football
Political
Useless
The Balancing Of Present Wants Against The Future Is Really The Central Problem Of Ethics.
Want
Ethics
Problem
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
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
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
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 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
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
The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.
The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.
Men
Self
Invincible
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
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
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
It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.
War
Tests
Life Is
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.
Leadership
Business
Common Sense
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
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
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
Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.
Men
Personality
Lifetime
You Don't Have To Preach Honesty To Men With A Creative Purpose. A Genuine Craftsman Will Not Adulterate This Product. The Reason Isn't Because Duty Says He Shouldn't, But Because Passion Says He Couldn't.
Honesty
Passion
Men
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
Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.
Ideas
Creative
Insecurity
What A Myth Never Contains Is The Critical Power To Separate Its Truth From Its Errors.
Truth
Errors
Myth
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
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
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.
Exercise
May
Live Free
There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.
Self
Two
Regal
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
Superstitions
It Is Easier To Develop Great Power Than It Is To Know How To Use It Wisely.
Use
Easier
Great Power
When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking
Success
Funny Inspirational
Creativity
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 Requires Wisdom To Understand Wisdom: The Music Is Nothing If The Audience Is Deaf.
Inspirational
Positive
Music
The Present Crisis Of Western Democracy Is A Crisis In Journalism.
Democracy
Journalism
Crisis
Once You Touch The Biographies Of Human Beings, The Notion That Political Beliefs Are Logically Determined Collapses Like A Pricked Balloon.
Political
Biographies
Balloons
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