Lincoln Steffens Quotes
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If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation.
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My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.
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I have seen the future, and it works.
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The best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived, even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has not yet been discovered.
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One improvement I have learned from my childhood experience with my father: I do not threaten punishment in the morning. That was awful. Late into the night I would lie awake tossing and wondering what he was going to do to me. Usually he did nothing. A quiet, impressive 'talking to' was all I got.
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The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.
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You can't control a young horse unless you control yourself.
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First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation.
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You ask men in office to be honest; I ask them to serve the public.
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Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.
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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in - then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.
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The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle.
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And an educated mind is nothing but the God-given mind of a child after his parents' and his grandparents' generation have got through molding it. We can't help teaching you; you will ask that of us; but we are prone to teach you what we know, and I am going, now and again, to warn you: Remember we really don't know anything. Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don't know. That is your playground, bare and graveled, safe and unbreakable.
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In all cities, the better classes - the business men - are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.
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So youve been over into Russia? said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, I have been over into the future and it works.
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In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.
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We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.
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My father seemed always to know not only what I was doing, but what I was being.
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The Soviet government sprouted and grew out of the habits, the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It fitted them. They understand it.
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I let my boy go and do and say pretty much as he likes, as, and perhaps because, my father kept no string on me.
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My mother would thump me sharply on the head with a thimble or a spoon if I became too noisy with the whistle when I was playing I was a steamboat captain. She had no sense of the dignity of command.
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Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over.
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We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories; but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms.
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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
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It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done; not often.
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My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
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The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.
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