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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.

Sydney J. Harris

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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Characteristics Lessons Treats
When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Funny Inspirational Life
Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Brain Knowledge One Small
Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Attain Honesty Lying Maturity Truth
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
The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Art Knowing Made
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Compassion Judging Justice
People decline invitations when they are “indisposed” physically, and I wish they would do likewise when they feel indisposed emotionally. A person has no more right to attend a party with a head full of venom than with a throat full of virus.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Imposed Party People Physically Wish
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Education Parenting Responsibility
Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Keeping Promises Summer Winter
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
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Attitude Hate Shadow
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Fear Ourselves Person Someone Younger
There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Forgiveness Heartbroken Site
Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Morning Staring Typewriters
The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Memories Mom

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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