Lincoln Steffens Quotes
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If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government.
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Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.
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The typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a 'big business man' and very busy, he does not neglect; he is busy with politics, oh, very busy and very businesslike.
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The longer I live, the more I feel that the individual is not so much to blame - not even the worst individuals, not even the 'best' citizens - as the system of corruption which has grown up about us, and which rewards an honest man with a mere living and a crook with all the magnificence of our magnificent modern life.
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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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The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.
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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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I have been over into the future, and it works.
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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 spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.
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My mother would thump me sharply on the head with a thimble or a spoon if I became too noisy with the whistle when I was playing I was a steamboat captain. She had no sense of the dignity of command.
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Nothing fails like success.
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Most men think graft a sporadic evil, breaking out here and there, with no connection between outbreaks. I shared the same opinion, but very soon I discovered that the graft in the cities always leads to the graft in the State.
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You ask men in office to be honest; I ask them to serve the public.
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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 am really puzzled to understand myself.
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The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.
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We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.
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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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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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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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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 Russian people, sober, are said to be a gentle people.
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My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me - and laugh.