Quote

Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.

Lincoln Steffens

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Lincoln Steffens
Age: 70 †
Born: 1866
Born: April 6
Died: 1936
Died: August 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
San Francisco County
California
Lincoln Austin Steffens
Power
Men
Abuse
Group
Seek
Groups
Gets
Story
Stories

More quotes by Lincoln Steffens

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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
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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
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It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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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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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
Lincoln Steffens
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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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Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties.
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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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My father seemed always to know not only what I was doing, but what I was being.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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My father made with me one serious mistake which I see parents about me making. He got himself somehow into the awkward position of an authority I thought he knew and was right on everything - for a while.
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It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
Lincoln Steffens