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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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Lincoln Steffens
Age: 70 †
Born: 1866
Born: April 6
Died: 1936
Died: August 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
San Francisco County
California
Lincoln Austin Steffens
Knowledge
Wrong
Makes
Things
World
Keeps
Learning
Seeing
Sure

More quotes by Lincoln Steffens

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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.
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.
Lincoln Steffens
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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
Lincoln Steffens
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Why is it that the less intelligence people have, the more spiritual they are? They seem to fill all the vacant, ignorant spaces in their heads with soul. Which explains how it is that the less knowledge they have, the more religion.
Lincoln Steffens
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It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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
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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done not often.
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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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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I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
Lincoln Steffens
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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
Lincoln Steffens
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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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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
Lincoln Steffens
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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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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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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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
Lincoln Steffens
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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.
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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My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
Lincoln Steffens