317 Quotes by Walter Lippmann

Run against the grain of a nation’s genius and see where you get with your laws.

The American’s conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man’s way of life.

Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth’s surface, moves in a small circle, and of these acquaintances knows only a few intimately.

That is why it is often such a relief when the talk turns from “general topics” to a man’s own hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the painter’s portrayal of his own emotional response to his own inattentive memory of what he imagines he ought to have seen.

Politicians tend to live “in character” and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism that describes him.

Only the consciousness of a purpose that is greater than any man can seed and fortify the souls of men.

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.

Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned.That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.