Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.

It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.

All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.

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.

A truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future.

The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

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

Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

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 three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'

The beauty of 'spacing' children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.

Nice things are done for our own sake, not for the sake of others. The pleasure must reside in the performance, not in the applause. Good deeds are, in a deeper psychological way, a favor to oneself. If this is not grasped, then our whole sense of personal relationships becomes warped.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.

All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.

Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.

A loser says that's the way it's always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.

The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.

Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.

If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, "You Only Live Once."

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 get better.

American parents, on the whole, do not want their sons to be artisans or craftsmen, but business or professional people. As a result, millions of youngsters are being prepared for careers they have little aptitude for - and little interest in except for dubious prestige.

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.

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.

A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."

Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

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.

Making out an invitation list for a party brings out the worst in everyone. It is then that our most ruthless estimates of the people we know come into play.

The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.

Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.

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.

When we have "second thoughts" about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

A person is either himself or not himself; is either rooted in his existence or is a fabrication; has either found his humanhood or is still playing with masks and roles and status symbols. 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.

We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.

At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.

But what is significant is that if you don't want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don't matter, and the reasons are never as ‘reasonable' as we like to think they are.

Christianity is not a "spiritual" religion, like some religions of the east. It is an intensely "practical" religion, having its moral roots in the practicality of judaism. It was not designed to change the way men think or believe as much as to change the way they act.