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When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’

Sydney J. Harris

As the horsepower in modern automobiles steadily rises, the congestion of traffic steadily lowers the average possible speed of your car. This is known as Progress.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Average Car Progress
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

Keeping Promises Summer Winter
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Fear Ourselves Person Someone Younger
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Compassion Judging Justice
Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Discovery Tools Truth
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Imposed Party People Physically Wish
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.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Consider Experts Growth
Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Brain Knowledge One Small
There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Forgiveness Heartbroken Site
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
The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Children Memories Mom
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
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Able Possession Renounce
People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS

Generosity People Thinking
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
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

Math Real Technology

When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’

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When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’

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