We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
SYDNEY J. HARRISA 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.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
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 greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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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The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
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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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Being yourself is not remaining what you were, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure and far from the goal.
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The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
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Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
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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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There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
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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 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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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 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