Walter Lippmann Quotes

Towering over Presidents and State Governors, over Congress and State Legislatures, over conventions and the vast machinery of party, public opinion stands out in the United States, as the great source of Power.

I don't think you can impose a social order from the top down.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Order is power.

Do we sufficiently appreciate how omnipotent is opinion in the matter of all government? Do we consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united government?

The will of the people makes governments legitimate.

We are ruled by public opinion, not by statute law.

As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as the most free and the most popular.

There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal.

Campaigns are not, and should not be, democratic processes. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.

No usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

Ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner.

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

I like to be in control of things.

Now, there's a desire for order, authority coming from a feeling that society has gone too far to the side of individualism and liberalism.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there's nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.

A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence - one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

There are good reasons why we don't want everyone to learn nuclear physics, medicine or how financial markets work. Our entire modern project has been about delegating power over us to skilled people who want to do the work and be rewarded accordingly.