Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People often selectively notice information that aligns with their existing beliefs and ignore contrasting views.
Walter Lippmann's quote highlights a cognitive bias that influences how individuals perceive information. It suggests that the casual or uncritical mind tends to latch onto examples that confirm its pre-existing prejudices, leading to a skewed understanding of the broader realities of the world. This phenomenon can result in misjudgments about entire groups or ideas based on isolated instances that fit one's biases.
Themes
PrejudiceBiasPerceptionCognitionMind
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about climate change, one might quote Lippmann to discuss how certain views can overlook scientific evidence.
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 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
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Walter LippmannRead
Similar quotes
The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Umberto EcoRead
My experience of living with people of diverse religions and cultures taught me that one will never be at peace with the other if one is at war with oneself.
Tariq RamadanRead
There's nothing in your life or in our collective problems that does not require our ability to put our attention where we care about. At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time.
Tristan HarrisRead
Society cannot continue to disable themselves through their need to categorize people or make assumptions as to another individual's abilities.
Evelyn GlennieRead
Some people who've read my story think I had a terrible childhood and that I was neglected or even abused, while others feel that my parents, while certainly flawed, also had truly wonderful qualities. And that's the way it should be, because in real life two people can look at the same president and one will see a hero and the other a villain.
Jeannette WallsRead
Charity is the cement that unites communities to God and individuals to each other_x000D_ so that he who contributes to the union of hearts in a community_x000D_ binds it indissolubly to God.
St. VincentRead