Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
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.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes how public opinion is often manipulated for partisan interests, undermining individual intelligence.
Walter Lippmann's quote emphasizes the manipulation of public opinion by partisan groups, suggesting that when individuals are urged to lend their opinions, it reflects more on the exploitative tactics of these groups rather than the individuals' capacity for independent thought. The suggestion is that such appeals disrespect a person's intelligence and integrity by not acknowledging their ability to think critically and rely on evidence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of critical thinking in today's media landscape.
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.
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.
The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection.
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.
LET A MAN THINK AND CARE ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him-making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not.
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