Sydney J. Harris (1917–86) was an American syndicated essayist and drama critic for the Chicago Daily News and later Chicago Sun-Times. His weekday column, “Strictly Personal,” approached social and philosophical questions with a wry, humanist style.
Born in London, Harris’s family moved to the United States when he was five years old. He grew up in Chicago and spent the rest of his life there. After studying philosophy at the University of Chicago, he became a drama critic and a columnist for the Chicago Daily News in 1944. He held those positions until the paper ended in 1978 and then wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times until his death.
Harris’s “Strictly Personal” column was distributed to more than 200 American and Canadian newspapers by the Times of London syndicate. He used his background in philosophy and research to write about the contemporary world, human behavior, societal norms, faith, hypocrisy, and art in an intellectual, yet folksy style.
Collections of Harris’s columns were assembled into 11 books, including Strictly Personal (1953,) Majority of One (1957,) Pieces of Eight (1982,) and Clearing the Ground (1986.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sydney J. Harris
When we have ‘second thoughts’ about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Thoughts
Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
—Sydney J. Harris
The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.
—Sydney J. Harris
Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with charge cards.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Food
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Cynicism, Criticism
There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Forgiveness
Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable.
—Sydney J. Harris
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. 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
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Education
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
Topics: Identity
Have you ever noticed that it is generally the same people who talk about the need for incentive to make a man work successfully, who resent the idea of incentive to make a man think successfully?
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Work
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Democracy, Government
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.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Pessimism
Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
—Sydney J. Harris
The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Progress
Maturity begins when we’re content to feel we’re right about something, without feeling the necessity to prove someone else is wrong.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Maturity
A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Forgiveness
Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.
—Sydney J. Harris
An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Idealism, Ideals, Believe, Ideal
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.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Conflict
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
—Sydney J. Harris
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Anger
Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Health
The core in the mystery of what we call personality resides in the individual mix between character and temperament.
—Sydney J. Harris
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
Topics: Advice
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
—Sydney J. Harris
Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Wealth, Being True to Yourself
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
Topics: Promises
When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Dissent
If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, “You Only Live Once.”
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Evil
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