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.
SYDNEY J. HARRISIf a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
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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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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.
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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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Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams. Happiness is a direction, not a place.
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Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
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Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
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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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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
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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.
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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.” —
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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 loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.
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Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
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The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.
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Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS