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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.

Sydney J. Harris

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Fear Lessons Past
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Answers Predicaments Problem
We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Pain Suffering Withdrawal
The founder of every creed from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, would be appalled to return to earth and see what has been made of that creed, not by its enemies, but by its most devoted adherents.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Appalled Christ Enemy Jesus
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Feelings Order People
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Communication Loneliness Real
The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discomfort Middle Partisan
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

Children Coated Examination Father Review Team
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Hands Philosophical Religious
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Atrocities Greater Warfare
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Able Possession Renounce
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Estimated Party People Play Worst
Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Brain Knowledge One Small
Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discovery Tools Truth
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Confusing Teacher Teaching
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Appreciation Loss Swing

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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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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Popular Authors

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