Lincoln Steffens Quotes

The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.

Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t in all the world a perfect railroad, nor a good government, nor a sound law. Physics, mathematics, and especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences are being fundamentally revised. . . Psychology, economics, and sociology are awaiting a Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein.

I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.

My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.

he thoughtless knowers will call you a red or a communist or a capitalist or some name that expresses their aversion to any mental activity. But somebody must take a chance. The monkeys did who became men, and the monkeys who didn’t are still jumping around in the trees making faces at us monkeys who did.

The doctrine of Jesus is the most revolutionary propaganda that I have ever encountered.

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.

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.

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.

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.

My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.