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.
SYDNEY J. HARRISReal 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.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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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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Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’
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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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The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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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The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.
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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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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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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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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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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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If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, but the perpetual human predicament is that the answer soon poses its own problems.
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There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
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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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Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?
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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.
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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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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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We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
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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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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.
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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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Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.
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Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
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Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS