Walter Lippmann

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

"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf." Walter Lippmann

"The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth." Walter Lippmann

"No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people." Walter Lippmann

"The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"Industry is a better horse to ride than genius." Walter Lippmann

"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

"When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers." Walter Lippmann