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

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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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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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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
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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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Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.
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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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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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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
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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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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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