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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

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.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

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

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

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

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.

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.

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

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

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.

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