There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
SYDNEY J. HARRISThe primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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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.
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Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.
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More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
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An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter.
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It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.
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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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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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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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And to assert defensively at the outset that he is happily married, the father of four children and the one-time adornment of his college boxing, track and tennis teams.
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There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
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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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Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith.
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A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
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What 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.
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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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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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Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
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The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
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We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
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Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
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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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Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.
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Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.
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Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
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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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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