Walter Lippmann

“ If our thought has been ineffective we shall not save ourselves by not thinking at all, for there is only one way to break the vicious circle of action, and that is by subjecting it endlessly to the most ruthless criticism of which we are capable. ”

“ Force and Ideas
EVERY sane person knows that it is a greater thing to build a city than to bombard it, to plough a field than to trample it, to serve mankind than to conquer it. And yet once the armies get loose, the terrific noise and shock of war make all that was valuable seem pale and dull and sentimental. ”

“ It comes home finally to all those who live carelessly, too lazy to think, too preoccupied to care, afraid to move, afraid to change, eager for a false peace, unwilling to pay the daily costs of sanity. ”

“ It is not enough to hate war and waste, to launch one unanalyzed passion against another, to make the world a vast debating ground in which tremendous accusations are directed against the Kaiser and the financiers, the diplomatists and the gun manufacturers. ”

“ We have not known enough, we have not been trained enough, ready enough, nor radical enough to make our will effective. We have taken the ideas that were thrust upon us, we have believed that we were told to believe. We have got into habits of thought when unnecessary things seemed inevitable, in panic and haste we stumbled into what we did not want. ”

“ It requires a trained intelligence to realize that the building of the Panama Canal by the American Army is perhaps the greatest victory an army has ever won. Yet the victories of peace are less renowned than those of war. ”

“ War is the one activity that men really plan for passionately on a national scale, the only organization which is thoroughly conceived. Men prepare themselves for campaigns they may never wage, but for peace, even when they meet the most acute social crisis, they will not prepare themselves. ”

“ We in America are not immune to what some people imagine to be the diseases of Europe. Nothing would be easier for us than to drift into an impossible situation, our life racked and torn within and without. ”

“ The hope of labor is absorbed, the great plans built on the surplus of wealth are dropped, for the armies have to be financed. Merely to exist has become a problem, to live finely seems to many a derelict hope.
Yet the fact remains that the final argument against cannon is ideas. The thoughts of men which seem so feeble are the only weapons they have against overwhelming force. ”

“ We are committed to responsibilities we do not understand, we are the victims of interests and deceptive ideas, and nothing but our own clarified effort can protect us from the consequences. We, too, can blunder into horror. ”

“ But subtle calculations in a laboratory, or the careful planning of streets and sanitation and schools, things which constitute the great peaceful adventure of democracy, seem to sink so much whimpering futility. ”

“ They have their troops ready to put down labor disputes; they will not think out the problems of labor. They turn men into military automata, stamp upon every personal feeling for what they call the national defence; they are too timid to discipline business. ”