78 Quotes by Lincoln Steffens

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.

Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.

The Russian people, sober, are said to be a gentle people.

The spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit.

I have been contending all my life, and always with God.

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.

I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.

Morality is moral only when it is voluntary.

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.