Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?" 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." Walter Lippmann

"What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"The news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann

""...a drifting apart of public opinion and published opinion when the selection rules of the journalists who have been brought into line largely coincide. This creates a consonance of reporting that acts like a confirmation to the audience (everyone says it, so it has to be right) and installs a stereotype-supported pseudo-environment"" Walter Lippmann

"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

"Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power." Walter Lippmann

"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." Walter Lippmann