Quotations by:
Lippmann, Walter
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 (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“Roosevelt Has Gone,” “Today and Tomorrow” column (14 Apr 1945)
On the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“Roosevelt Has Gone,” “Today and Tomorrow” column (14 Apr 1945)
With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of nature, 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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“The Democratic Malady,” The Public Philosophy (1955)
(Source)
This is the way of greatness. In the supreme moments of history, terms like duty, truth, justice, and mercy — which in our torpid hours are tired words — become the measure of decision. … The straight and righteous path is the shortest and the surest.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“The Fascination of Greatness,” Today and Tomorrow (7 Sep 1943)
(Source)
Our faults and sins seem all the bigger when they are seen by the world against the excessively self-righteous picture that is our official version of ourselves.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“The Grace of Humility,” New York Herald Tribune (24 Sep 1957)
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“The Indispensable Opposition,” The Atlantic Monthly (Aug 1939)
(Source)
The national unity of a free people depends upon a sufficiently even balance of political power to make it impracticable for the administration to be arbitrary and for the opposition to be revolutionary and irreconcilable. Where that balance no longer exists, democracy perishes. For unless all the citizens of a state are forced by circumstances to compromise, unless they feel that they can affect policy but that no one can wholly dominate it, unless by habit and necessity they have to give and take, freedom cannot be maintained.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“The Indispensable Opposition,” The Atlantic Monthly (Aug 1939)
(Source)
There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“What Modern Liberty Means,” Liberty and the News (1920)
(Source)
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
“Books and Things,” The New Republic, (7 Aug 1915)
After reading a book on politics he didn't like.
When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)
Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)
Toleration is not merely a generous byproduct of the American system: it is its essential principle.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)
Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)
Quoted in Celebrity Register, ed. C. Amory, E. Blackwell (1963)
Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)Quoted in C. Amory and E. Blackwell (eds.) Celebrity Register (1963)
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 (1889-1974) American journalist and author
(Attributed)
He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, 11.3 (1929)
To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, 15.3 (1929)
Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the the intelligible consequence of it.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, 7.7 (1929)
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. Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, ch. 1, sec. 3 (1929)
(Source)
Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface To Morals, ch. 19 (1929)
(Source)
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, ch. 7 (1913)
(Source)
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, Part 1, ch. 7 (1929)
(Source)
The emotion of love, in spite of the romantics, is not self-sustaining; it endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Morals, Part III, ch. 14 “Love in the Great Society” (1929)Usually elided as "Love endures only when ..." Full text.
Religion, patriotism, race, and sex are the favorite red herrings of foul political method — they are the most successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics (1913)
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 1 (1914)
(Source)
Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 2 (1914)
When philosophers try to be politicians, they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 3 (1914)
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 (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 4 (1913)
(Source)
I have always thought that Machiavelli derives his bad name from a too transparent honesty. Less direct minds would have found high-sounding ethical sanctions in which to conceal the real intent. … Machiavelli’s morals are not one bit worse than the practices of the men who rules the world today.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 7 (1913)
Full text.
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 9 “Revolution and Culture” (1913)
(Source)
The responsibility for insurrections rests in the last analysis upon the unimaginative greed and endless stupidity of the dominant classes. […] Confronted with the deep insurgency of labor what do capitalists and their spokesmen do? They resist every demand, submit only after a struggle, and prepare a condition of war to the death.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface to Politics, ch. 9 (1914)
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Men of Destiny, ch. 8 “The Nature of the Battle Over Censorship,” sec. 2 (1927)
(Source)
No one has ever been known to decline to serve on a committee to investigate radicals on the ground that so much exposure to their doctrines would weaken his patriotism, nor on a vice commission on the ground that it would impair his morals. Anything may happen inside the censor, but what counts is that in his outward appearances after his ordeal by temptation he is more than ever a paragon of the conforming virtues. Perhaps his appetites are satisfied by an inverted indulgence, but to a clear-sighted conservative that does not really matter. The conservative is not interested in innocent thoughts. He is interested in loyal behavior.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Men of Destiny, ch. 8 “The Nature of the Battle Over Censorship,” sec. 2 (1927)
(Source)
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Observer (27 Mar. 1938)
The Many can elect after the Few have nominated.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Public Opinion, 14.6 (1922)
[Machiavelli] has a worse name and more disciples than any political thinker who ever lived.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Public Opinion, 17.2 (1922)
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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Public Opinion, ch. 10 “The Detection of Stereotypes,” sec. 9 (1922)
(Source)
Man cannot be made free by laws unless they are in fact free because no man can buy and no one can coerce them. That is why the Englishman’s belief that his home is his castle and that the King cannot enter it, like the American’s convictions that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell, are the very essence of the free man’s way of life.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
The Method of Freedom (1934)
One might say that a nation is politically stable when nothing of radical consequence is determined by its elections.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
The Phantom Public, 12.1 (1930)
With exceptions so rare that they are regarded as miracles and freaks of nature, 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.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
The Public Philosophy (1955)
There is a deep disorder in our society which comes not from the machinations of our enemies and from the adversities of the human condition, but from within ourselves.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
The Public Philosophy, 1.1 (1955)
A large part of the mischief and folly of the world comes from rushing in, taking a position, the not knowing how to retreat. There is something about making a speech or writing an article which perverts the human mind. When an utterance is published, the Rubicon has been crossed and the bridges have been burned. It seems to end the inquiry, and after that we almost cease to be interested in the truth, being so preoccupied to prove that we already possess it.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Columnn, New York Herald Tribune (10 Oct 1953)