black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living; it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon one’s resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination; how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.

Sydney J. Harris

The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Father Mother Parent
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Confusing Teacher Teaching
The public examination of homosexuality in our contemporary life is still so coated with distasteful moral connotations that even a reviewer is bound to wonder uneasily why he was selected to evaluate a book on the subject.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Coated Examination Father Review Team
Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Dangerous Ignorance Nearly
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

Imposed Party People Physically Wish
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Funny Time Witty
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

Consider Experts Growth
Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one’s own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you-either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Art Choices Squares
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

Hard People Play Work
No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Men Philosophy
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

Minorities People Psychics
And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Independent
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Atrocities Greater Warfare
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Inspirational Love Motivational
It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Believe Insanity Mean
If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Endure Terrible

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Sydney J. Harris Quotes