Walter Lippmann

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.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

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

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

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.

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

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

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.