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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.

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
Practice
Refinement
Boston
Hypocrisy
Carried
Degree
Degrees
Failure
Grace

More quotes by Lincoln Steffens

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I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done not often.
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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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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
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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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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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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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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
Lincoln Steffens
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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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My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
Lincoln Steffens