Walter Lippmann Quotes

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?

We are, on the whole, an idolatrous people...

Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.

The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

When you worship an idol, you're substituting a thing for the ultimate.

Whatever you love more than God is your idol.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood

Kings are the peoples Idols, creatures of their own making

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

People should never worship images. The spread of mental darkness is due to the prevalence of idolatry.

People tend not to want to question dogma. But I'm afraid of dogma.

The man molds the idol and then the idol molds the man.

But merely accepting authoritarian truth, even if that truth has some virtue, does not bring skepticism to an end. To blindly accept a truth one has never reflected upon retards the advance of reason. Our world rots in deceit. . . . Just as a tree bears the same fruit year after year and at the same time fruit that is new each year, so must all permanently valuable ideas be continually created anew in thought. But our age pretends to make a sterile tree bear fruit by tying fruits of truth onto its branches.

All gold and silver rather turn to dirt, An 'tis no better reckoned but of these Who worship dirty gods.

One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.

The human heart is a factory of idols...Everyon e of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols.

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

We've gone all the way from foolishly accepting authority to foolishly rejecting all authority.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

You can't discover one foot of clay on an idol without suspecting the other.