Top 100 Sydney J. Harris Quotes
#1. The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
Sydney J. Harris
#2. More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
Sydney J. Harris
#4. The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
Sydney J. Harris
#5. We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Sydney J. Harris
#6. It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.
Sydney J. Harris
#7. The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
Sydney J. Harris
#9. If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Sydney J. Harris
#10. Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
Sydney J. Harris
#11. Achieving the good life is more a matter of being than of doing or giving. It calls for intense self-scrutiny, a relentless honesty about one's motives, and a persistent feeling that we are no better - and perhaps worse - than those we are trying to help.
Sydney J. Harris
#12. Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do.
Sydney J. Harris
#13. But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
Sydney J. Harris
#14. When a man's position in life depends upon his having a certain opinion, that's the opinion he will have.
Sydney J. Harris
#15. Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
Sydney J. Harris
#16. At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach - it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.
Sydney J. Harris
#17. Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos.
Sydney J. Harris
#18. Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves
so how can we know anyone else?
Sydney J. Harris
#19. Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'
Sydney J. Harris
#20. The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
Sydney J. Harris
#21. Yet, advice on what we can do is usually futile - for we will do nothing except applaud the speaker, accept those ideas of his we already agree with, and reject those ideas that run counter to our prejudices.
Sydney J. Harris
#22. But in terms of "psychological" time, most of us are still living in centuries past, stirred by ancient grudges, controlled by obsolete prejudices, driven by buried fears.
Sydney J. Harris
#23. Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
Sydney J. Harris
#24. You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
Sydney J. Harris
#25. Making out an invitation list for a party brings out the worst in everyone. It is then that our most ruthless estimates of the people we know come into play.
Sydney J. Harris
#26. Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
Sydney J. Harris
#27. Just about the only interruption we don't object to is applause.
Sydney J. Harris
#28. By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.
Sydney J. Harris
#29. Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
Sydney J. Harris
#30. The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely - which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.
Sydney J. Harris
#31. All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.
Sydney J. Harris
#32. And that is the beautiful thing about friendship: we can take liberties, we can show our frailer side, we can afford the vast luxury of giving way to our boredom when we are bored, our anger when we are angry, our peckishness when we feel downhearted.
Sydney J. Harris
#33. We must also learn that time itself is indivisible, that every act is a blending of past experience, present situation and future expectancy.
Sydney J. Harris
#34. Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
Sydney J. Harris
#35. The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.
Sydney J. Harris
#36. A 'penchant for telling the truth' can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor's wife.
Sydney J. Harris
#37. The French may be straining the truth in their famous saying that "to understand all is to forgive all"," but it is certainly true that the more we know of any given person, the harder it becomes to hate him.
Sydney J. Harris
#38. People decline invitations when they are "indisposed" physically, and I wish they would do likewise when they feel indisposed emotionally. A person has no more right to attend a party with a head full of venom than with a throat full of virus.
Sydney J. Harris
#39. It calls for deciding things on their own merit, not because you read it or were told it or grew up believing it.
Sydney J. Harris
#40. The whole world is a gigantic legacy. Imagine having to start afresh each generation: who would invent the wheel, devise the lever, construct the alphabet and multiplication table? I could not; could you?
Sydney J. Harris
#41. The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Sydney J. Harris
#42. The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.
Sydney J. Harris
#43. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
Sydney J. Harris
#44. Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
Sydney J. Harris
#45. Like all persecuted minority groups, they strike back by forming cabals, by "taking over" certain spheres of activity (in the arts, for instance), and by purposely provocative behavior.
Sydney J. Harris
#46. Patriotism is wanting what is best for your country. Nationalism is thinking your country is best, no matter what it does.
Sydney J. Harris
#47. If you want to know what a man's character is really like ... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires - for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature.
Sydney J. Harris
#48. Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure; and we learn too late in life that our acts of deception are irrevocable - they may be forgiven, but they cannot be forgotten by their victims.
Sydney J. Harris
#49. Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.
Sydney J. Harris
#50. Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
Sydney J. Harris
#51. A child owes respect to a parent, but there is no natural obligation to like a parent - unless the parent makes himself likable as a person.
Sydney J. Harris
#52. Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
Sydney J. Harris
#53. Many married couples separate because they quarrel incessantly, but just as many separate because they were never honest enough or courageous enough to quarrel when they should have.
Sydney J. Harris
#54. Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.
Sydney J. Harris
#55. Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
Sydney J. Harris
#56. The cynic is goodhearted beneath his facade, whereas the sentimentalist is flint-hearted beneath his.
Sydney J. Harris
#57. The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel.
Sydney J. Harris
#58. As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood
and an almost total inability to practice it.
Sydney J. Harris
#59. The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.
Sydney J. Harris
#60. We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.
Sydney J. Harris
#61. A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris
#62. The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.
Sydney J. Harris
#63. Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.
Sydney J. Harris
#64. American parents, on the whole, do not want their sons to be artisans or craftsmen, but business or professional people. As a result, millions of youngsters are being prepared for careers they have little aptitude for - and little interest in except for dubious prestige.
Sydney J. Harris
#65. Genuine love for a child, it seems to me, must include a desire for his maturity and ultimately his independence. WAtching a personality unfold is perhaps the deepest pleasure of parenthood; wishing, or trying, to retard this growth is one of the deepest sins.
Sydney J. Harris
#66. The profound immoralities of our time are cruelty, indifference, injustice and the use of others as means rather than ends in themselves.
Sydney J. Harris
#67. As WArden Lawes once said of convicts, no man can be called a failure until he has tried something he really likes, and fails at it.
Sydney J. Harris
#68. We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say, "I lost it.
Sydney J. Harris
#70. Genuine contentment is found in performing tasks that take us out of ourselves, for a purpose greater than ourselves. Only when the personality is subordinated to a higher goal do we attain the serenity we are looking for.
Sydney J. Harris
#71. A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.
Sydney J. Harris
#72. The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are.
Sydney J. Harris
#73. It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case."
Sydney J. Harris
#74. Nice things are done for our own sake, not for the sake of others. The pleasure must reside in the performance, not in the applause. Good deeds are, in a deeper psychological way, a favor to oneself. If this is not grasped, then our whole sense of personal relationships becomes warped.
Sydney J. Harris
#75. Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.
Sydney J. Harris
#76. The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.
Sydney J. Harris
#77. Somebody once said that if many people had not read about romantic love and seen it on the screen, they would never look for it themselves. I believe this. And along with it I believe that if many people were not ashamed to be thought deficient in "family feeling" they would never have children.
Sydney J. Harris
#78. Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them.
Sydney J. Harris
#79. Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
Sydney J. Harris
#81. All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
Sydney J. Harris
#82. When we inform, we lead from strength; when we communicate, we lead from weakness - and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.
Sydney J. Harris
#83. Many people feel "guilty" about things they shouldn't feel guilty about, in order to shut out feelings of guilt about things they should feel guilty about.
Sydney J. Harris
#84. God cannot be solemn, or he would not have blessed man with the incalculable gift of laughter.
Sydney J. Harris
#85. When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?
Sydney J. Harris
#86. ...when the createdness of the other person is not viewed as necessary as our own - then there is no reason (beyond expediency) to treat the other as a person. All injustice and cruelty come, basically, from this distorted view of reality.
Sydney J. Harris
#87. Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to reamin the same but get better ...
Sydney J. Harris
#88. The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.
Sydney J. Harris
#89. Why do so many people yearn for an eternal life when they don't even know what to do with themselves in this brief one?
Sydney J. Harris
#90. Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder - and turn quickly to my typewriter.
Sydney J. Harris
#91. Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
Sydney J. Harris
#92. Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
Sydney J. Harris
#93. Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson ... Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.
Sydney J. Harris
#94. Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
Sydney J. Harris
#95. Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
Sydney J. Harris
#96. The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
Sydney J. Harris
#97. The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.
Sydney J. Harris
#98. Being yourself is not remaining where you are, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure.
Sydney J. Harris
#99. Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
Sydney J. Harris
#100. Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?
Sydney J. Harris
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
