Walter Lippmann Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Strong, Skills, People

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  88 Copy quote

• When all think alike, then no one is thinking

  Walter Lippmann

  Success, Funny Inspirational, Creativity

  61 Copy quote

• 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?

  Walter Lippmann

  Saws, Facts, Opinion

  37 Copy quote

• There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

  Walter Lippmann

  Lying, Mean, Community

  61 Copy quote

• The news and the truth are not the same thing.

  Walter Lippmann

  News

  43 Copy quote

• The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

  Walter Lippmann

  Thinking, Doe, Presses

  54 Copy quote

• We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

  Walter Lippmann

  Opponents, Civil Rights, Speak

  6 Copy quote

• The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

  Walter Lippmann

  Democracy, Journalism, Crisis

  1920 Liberty and the News,'Journalism and the Higher Law'.

  44 Copy quote

• It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

  Walter Lippmann

  Inspirational, Positive, Music

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.324, Transaction Publishers

  532 Copy quote

• In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

  Walter Lippmann

  Men, Justice, Liberty

  Walter Lippmann (1938). “The good society”, p.267, Transaction Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Insecure, Successful, Men

  1955 The Public Philosophy, ch.2, sect.4.

  42 Copy quote

• Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

  Walter Lippmann

  Democracy, Important, Public Opinion

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Fall, Government, Order

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.241, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Perception, World, Imagine

  Walter Lippmann (2012). “Public Opinion”, p.49, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

  Walter Lippmann

  Inspirational, Change, Success

  New York Herald Tribune 14 Apr. 1945

  30 Copy quote

• We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

  Walter Lippmann

  World, Belief, Captives

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Looks, Sap, Opponents

  Walter Lippmann (2012). “Public Opinion”, p.69, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.

  Walter Lippmann

  Government, Enemy, Constitution

  15 Copy quote

• Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.

  Walter Lippmann

  Power, Men, Desire

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  11 Copy quote

• There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

  Walter Lippmann

  Law, Devil, Journalism

  Walter Lippmann (1995). “Liberty and the News”, p.15, Transaction Publishers

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  War, Men, Thinking

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Peace, Wall, War

  5 Copy quote

• Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.

  Walter Lippmann

  Rewards, Virtue, Consequence

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface to Morals”, p.137, Transaction Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.

  Walter Lippmann

  Listening, Important, May

  17 Copy quote

• He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

  Walter Lippmann

  Honor, Duty, Dangerous

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface to Morals”, p.224, Transaction Publishers

  68 Copy quote

Page 1 of 10

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin