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. HARRISMen make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
More Sydney J. Harris Quotes
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A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.
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The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
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Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.
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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.
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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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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
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People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault.
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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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There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS