More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
SYDNEY J. HARRISWhat is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
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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.
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And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
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This is a lesson mankind has not yet learned. We identify, and stratify, and treat persons largely on the basis of their accidental (physical) characteristics, which have no deeper meaning.
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Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.
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Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
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The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.
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Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues.
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The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
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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.
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The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
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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.
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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.
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Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
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Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
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We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
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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.
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Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.
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Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.
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When we have “second thoughts” about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
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If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
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People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault.
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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.
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When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’
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As the horsepower in modern automobiles steadily rises, the congestion of traffic steadily lowers the average possible speed of your car. This is known as Progress.
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The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS