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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.

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
Educated
Atheism
Harder
Theory
Knowledge
Axioms
Forget
Theories
Better
Absolutes
Believe
Absolute

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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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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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I have been contending all my life, and always with God.
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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
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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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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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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
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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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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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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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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 privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.
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The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
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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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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
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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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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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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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My father seemed always to know not only what I was doing, but what I was being.
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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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