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

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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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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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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.
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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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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 have been contending all my life, and always with God.
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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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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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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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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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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
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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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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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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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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.
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