Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
Walter LippmannIn a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
Walter LippmannIt was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
Walter LippmannAlmost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.
Walter LippmannAt the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.
Walter LippmannThe man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.
Walter Lippmann