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Current counts: Authors: 8,146. Quotations: 38,970
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| Walter Lippmann
A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state. Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy. He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconceivable, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. I would have carved on the portals of the National Press Club, Put not your trust in princes. 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. Industry is a better horse to ride than genius. Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed. Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions. Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat. Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings. No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people. Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon. 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. Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract. 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. The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters. 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. The senator might remember that the Evangelists had a more inspiring subject. The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class. 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. |
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