Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times. Some people are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Light, Education, Graduation, One liners
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
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Anger
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice — that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.”
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Self-reliance, Mistakes, Responsibility, Failures, Confidence, Maturity
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
Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence
When I hear somebody sigh that “Life is hard,” I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Attitude, Perspective, Difficulty
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
People who won’t help others in trouble “because they got into trouble through their own fault” would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning man until they learned whether he fell in through his own fault or not.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Service
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.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Mistakes
Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a necessary evil, it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Conscience
Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with charge cards.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Food
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
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Repentance, Carpe-diem, Regret, Remorse
The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Progress
We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Pleasure
A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”
—Sydney J. Harris
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Relaxation, Stress
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Teachers, Teaching
The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.
—Sydney J. Harris
Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.
—Sydney J. Harris
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. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason; because, though rational argument may take us to the edge of belief, we require a “leap of faith” to jump the chasm.
—Sydney J. Harris
Young people know less than we do, but they understand more; their perception has not yet been blunted by compromise, fatigue, rationalization, and the mistaking of mere respectability for morality.
—Sydney J. Harris
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.”
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Morals, Discipline, Ethics
Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
—Sydney J. Harris
Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Tolerance
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: Government, Democracy
When we have ‘second thoughts’ about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
—Sydney J. Harris
Topics: Thoughts
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
There are some things people can do to change and some things they cannot do — character can be formed, but temperament is given. And the strong who cannot bend are just as much to be pitied as the weak who cannot stiffen.
—Sydney J. Harris
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Midge Decter American Journalist
- Mignon McLaughlin American Journalist
- Jim Bishop American Author, Journalist
- John Mason Brown American Drama Critic
- Dorothy Dix American Journalist
- Howard Cosell American Sportscaster
- Leo Burnett American Advertising Executive
- Thomas Lansing Masson American Anthropologist
- Robert Quillen American Journalist
- Charles Kuralt American Journalist
Leave a Reply