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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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Lincoln Steffens
Age: 70 †
Born: 1866
Born: April 6
Died: 1936
Died: August 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
San Francisco County
California
Lincoln Austin Steffens
Individual
Principle
Spirit
Profit
Gains
Credit
National
Commercial
Trade
Patriotism
Honor
Gain
Principles
Prosperity

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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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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good 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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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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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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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
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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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If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in - then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.
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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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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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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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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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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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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done not often.
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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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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
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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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I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
Lincoln Steffens