Lincoln Steffens Quotes
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.
Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.
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.
Care like hell! Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.
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.
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.
The unknown is the province of the student; it is the field for his lifes adventure, and it is a wide field full of beckonings
The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me - and laugh.
Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government.
My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.
We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.
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.
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.
So youve been over into Russia? said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, I have been over into the future and it works.
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.
My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
My summary of all our experiences was that it showed that heaven and hell are one place, and we all go there. To those who are prepared, it is heaven; to those who are not fit and ready, it is hell.
If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government.
