Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter LippmannRead
It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the sources of our opinions and beliefs.
Walter Lippmann encourages us to critically examine the basis of our opinions by questioning the origins of the information we rely on. By reflecting on who gathered the facts we accept, we can better understand the validity of our beliefs and avoid forming opinions based on hearsay or unverified information.
Themes
OpinionWisdomInformationFactsCritical Thinking
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about media bias, you might say, 'As Walter Lippmann noted, we should ask ourselves about the sources of our opinions.'
More from Walter Lippmann
All quotes →The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
Walter LippmannRead
The news and the truth are not the same thing.
Walter LippmannRead
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
Walter LippmannRead
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.
Walter LippmannRead
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.
Walter LippmannRead
Similar quotes
Sunlight fell upon the wall; the wall received a borrowed splendor. Why set your heart on a piece of earth, O simple one? Seek out the source which shines forever.
RumiRead
Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment.
Victor HugoRead
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
Anatole FranceRead
There is no knowledge, no light, no wisdom that you are in possession of, but what you have received it from some source.
Brigham YoungRead
The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead