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.

Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

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

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

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

Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

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.

The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

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

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.

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.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

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.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

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

There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.

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