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. HARRISWhat 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.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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It’s odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which “I” is capitalized; in many other languages “You” is capitalized and the “i” is lower case.” —
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
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Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
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Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams. Happiness is a direction, not a place.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
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 -
Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.
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The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
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 -
The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
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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 -
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
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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.
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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 -
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.
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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.
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There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
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Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
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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 -
Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS -
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS