Walter Lippmann

“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative.”

“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.”

“For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see.”

“The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.”

“The public must be put in its place... so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”

“The process by which public opinion arises is rarely logical.”

“Private property was the original source of freedom. It is still its main bulwark.”

“The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears.”

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.”

“A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society.”

“He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.”

“A man who has no assured and useful place in society is a lonely man, and a lonely man is a force for destruction.”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

“It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.”

“Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.”