Walter Lippmann Quotes on Man (11 Quotes)

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone.

Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The de.

It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an ax the desires of men

Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York City.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men ... forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice.... They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties.... They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft.

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.