Sydney J. Harris

Quotes

• “The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much thei...”
• “I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want the...”
• “And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; o...”
• “The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the ...”
• “Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a h...”
• “Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remna...”
• “Genuine love for a child, it seems to me, must include a desire for his maturity and ultimately his independence. WAtchi...”
• “The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere it is not this sort of licence that distinguishes New York. It is rat...”
• “And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mi...”
• “Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves their abilities their frailties and even t...”
• “People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw...”
• “A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be consi...”
• “Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity yet alm...”
• “At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student'...”
• “The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return...”
• “But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off t...”
• “The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably but they signify quite different things....”
• “The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things....”
• “When a man says "I know what I mean, but I can't express it," he generally does not know what he means—for there can be ...”
• “But in terms of "psychological" time, most of us are still living in centuries past, stirred by ancient grudges, control...”
• “The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to ...”
• “Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot rea...”
• “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost " and s...”
• “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost " and s...”
• “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time what we really want is for things to remain the same but...”
• “Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Wh...”
• “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
• “Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”
• “The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”
• “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
• “The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.”
• “A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.”
• “There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.”
• “Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.”
• “Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.”
• “The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.”
• “Happiness is a direction, not a place.”