Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.Collection: Power
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.Collection: Best
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.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Patriotism
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.Collection: Government
Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.Collection: Art
You ask men in office to be honest; I ask them to serve the public.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Business
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.
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.
We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.
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.
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.
My father, the practical joker, did not care for practical jokes on himself; he did not encourage the practice in me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Creativity
It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.Collection: Men
Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don't knowCollection: Baby
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.Collection: Spiritual
Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over.Collection: Growth
The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.Collection: Sense Of Humor
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.Collection: Believe
It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.Collection: World
The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.Collection: Fear
First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation.Collection: Cities