Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1248
AUTHOR:
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
QUOTATION:
I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
ATTRIBUTION:
WALTER LIPPMANN, “Books and Things,” The New Republic, August 7, 1915, p. 24. Lippmann’s comments after reading a book on politics that displeased him.
