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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

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
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
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
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

Believe Insanity Mean
Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Acceptance Assuming Tolerance
A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Always Done Loser Way
By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Advice Generally Men Mind
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Able Possession Renounce
No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Men Philosophy
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Cynical May Men
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Hard People Play Work
Many married couples separate because they quarrel incessantly, but just as many separate because they were never honest enough or courageous enough to quarrel when they should have.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Couple Couples Divorce Quarrel Separate
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Believe Boys Parent
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
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

College Education Mind
Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Belief Dogmatic Reason Structure

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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