You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers. - Walter Lippmann

About Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was a United States writer, journalist, and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years he was among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, as well as critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippmann had a role in Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I board of inquiry, as its research director. His views regarding the role of journalism in a democracy were contrasted with the contemporaneous writings of John Dewey in what has been retrospectively named the Lippmann-Dewey debate. Lippmann won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his syndicated newspaper column "Today and Tomorrow" and one for his 1961 interview of Nikita Khrushchev.