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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

And to assert defensively at the outset that he is happily married, the father of four children and the one-time adornment of his college boxing, track and tennis teams.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Assert Children Defensively Terms Track
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
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
When we inform, we lead from strength; when we communicate, we lead from weakness-and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Allies Heart Weakness
A ‘penchant for telling the truth’ can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor’s wife.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Chance Telling Truth Wife
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Country Humility Legitimate Pride
Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Educated Looks People
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discipline Learning Life
The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light – and the next tunnel.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Light Next Optimist Tunnels
Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Men Unique War
When we have “second thoughts” about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Feelings Firsts Justice
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
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
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Mediocrity Merit
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
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

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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