American - Journalist | September 23, 1889 - December 14, 1974
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
MusicWisdomNothingUnderstandDeaf
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.
NatureGoodIntelligenceOpinionSee
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
GoodMoreHumanAlwaysHuman Being
The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.
PowerFirstContractOnlyPrinciple
When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
MenThinkAlikeThinksMuchVery
Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.
ProgressIgnoreWeakFailSocial
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
JusticeMenSocietyFreeOwnWho
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.
KnowledgePrideMissionTemptation
Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
MenThinkAlikeWhereThinksMuch
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
TruthIntroductionStudyDegreeOnly
Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.
FreedomMenEffortAuthorityEconomy
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.
LifeChangeNewConscienceSocial
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