Public Opinion

by Walter Lippmann

whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.

Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.

he incarnated for the conscience of mankind the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness.

By the same mechanism through which heroes are incarnated, devils are made.

The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts.

the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which there was a violent instinctive response.

It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it is behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real environment where action eventuates.

the murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts,

The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by recognizing the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of action.

They used their power to make the Allied publics see affairs as they desired them to be seen.

In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.

Privacy is insisted upon at all kinds of places in the area of what is called public affairs. It is often very illuminating, therefore, to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion.

there are vast groups, ghettoes, enclaves and classes that hear only vaguely about much that is going on. They live in grooves, are shut in among their own affairs, barred out of larger affairs, meet few people not of their own sort, read little.

The size of a man’s income has considerable effect on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood.

They suffer from anemia, from lack of appetite and curiosity for the human scene. Theirs is no problem of access to the world outside. Worlds of interest are waiting for them to explore, and they do not enter.

Since position and contact play so big a part in determining what can be seen, heard, read, and experienced, as well as what it is permissible to see, hear, read, and know, it is no wonder that moral judgment is so much more common than constructive thought.

The time and attention are limited that we can spare for the labor of not taking opinions for granted, and we are subject to constant interruption.

the time each day is small when any of us is directly exposed to information from our unseen environment.