Quote

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.

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
Going
Wonder
Awake
Would
Morning
Punishment
Talking
Awful
Lying
Childhood
Tossing
Experience
Quiet
Threaten
Father
Usually
Wondering
Night
Late
Impressive
Nothing
Learned
Improvement

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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done not often.
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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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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
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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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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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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
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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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My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
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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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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 never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
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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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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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Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.
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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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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 privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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