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
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automaton in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.
An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.
Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.
A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news.
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.