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
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.
In practice
In a debate about climate change, one might quote Lippmann to discuss how certain views can overlook scientific evidence.
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 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.
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.
Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil.
There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings.
A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth.
He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.
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