Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, and critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippmann was also a notable author for the Council on Foreign Relations, until he had an affair with the editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong's wife, which led to a falling...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth23 September 1889
CountryUnited States of America
It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.
Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.
A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.
The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.