The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.
Walter Lippmann
Friendship Quotes
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.
Walter Lippmann
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.
Walter Lippmann
We are all captives of the picture in our head -- our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.
Walter Lippmann
Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter Lippmann
Sports Quotes
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power
Walter Lippmann
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Walter Lippmann
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Walter Lippmann
At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
Walter Lippmann
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.