Walter Lippmann

"You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers." Walter Lippmann

"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart." Walter Lippmann

"In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents." Walter Lippmann

"The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business." Walter Lippmann

"Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail." Walter Lippmann

"We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated." Walter Lippmann

"Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings." Walter Lippmann

"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

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

"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

"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." Walter Lippmann

"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

"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." Walter Lippmann

"To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state." Walter Lippmann