Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter LippmannRead
People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
Interpretation
Rigid beliefs in youth can lead to a stagnant life in middle age.
Walter Lippmann's quote reflects on the dangers of holding onto strict, orthodox beliefs during one's youth. It suggests that those who do not challenge or evolve their perspectives may find themselves stuck in a monotonous, unchanging life as they age, missing opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth at a seminar, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of being open-minded.
Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
The news and the truth are not the same thing.
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
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.
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.
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.
Relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.....Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart?
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food.
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