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. HARRISAnd nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.
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A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.
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Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
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Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.
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An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter.
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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.
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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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If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
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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.
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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.
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More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
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Being yourself is not remaining what you were, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure and far from the goal.
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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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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.
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There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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.
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Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.
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And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
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And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.
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Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS