Walter Lippmann quotes

" It requires wisdom to understand wisdom the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. " # Music

" When all men think alike, no one thinks very much. " # Life and Living

" Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other. " # Love

" The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision. " # Media # Vision # Government

" 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. " # Humankind # Faith # Belief

" The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. 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. " # Leaders and Leadership # Genius # Courage

" There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral. " # Morality

" It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most. " # Government # Freedom # Power

" Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism. " # Corruption # Capitalism # Stupidity

" The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract. " # Constitutions # Civilization # Power