Quote

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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Lincoln Steffens
Age: 70 †
Born: 1866
Born: April 6
Died: 1936
Died: August 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
San Francisco County
California
Lincoln Austin Steffens
Better
Realize
Whence
Men
Source
Pursued
Cities
Sources
Realizing
Classes
Trouble
Corruption
Class
Rarely
Business
Fully
Comes
Caught

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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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It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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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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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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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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I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
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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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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.
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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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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
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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.
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I have been contending all my life, and always with God.
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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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