Walter Lippman Quotes

“Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.”

“What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.”

“Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.”

“Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.”

“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.”

“It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent.”

“Going to college don't make you from somewhere, any more than a cat born in an over can call itself a biscuit.”

“There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life.”

“There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again.”

“But you were a goody-goody, you said.' 'Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that's what defines us. We're always thinking about the things we don't dare do, figuring out where the lines are drawn, so we can go right up to the edge of things, then plead innocence on the ground of a technicality.”