Sydney J. Harris Quotes (60 Quotes)


    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".

    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.

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

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


    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.

    Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.

    Men may be divided almost any way we please, but I have found the most useful distinction to be made between those who devote their lives to conjugating the verb 'to be,' and those who spend their lives conjugating the verb 'to have.'

    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.

    Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

    Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.

    A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past he is the one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

    Parents and teachers too are woefully short-sighted when they try to protect the child from his mistakes, when they make the 'right answer' more important than the quest for knowledge and good judgment. For what is not learned within ones self cannot be learned from another.


    The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.

    The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

    Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.

    Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

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

    Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

    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.

    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 stop saying 'It got lost,' and say 'I lost it.'

    The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.


    A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

    People far prefer happiness to wisdom, but that is like wanting to be immortal without getting older.

    A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon ones resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.

    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.

    Many people feel 'guilty' about things they shouldn't feel guilty about, in order to shut out feelings of guilt about things they should feel guilty about.

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

    The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.

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

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

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

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

    Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?

    You may be certain that when a man begins to call himself a 'realist,' he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of.

    The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

    People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.

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

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

    If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

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

    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.

    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 real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

    Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.

    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.

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


    More Sydney J. Harris Quotations (Based on Topics)


    People - Mind - Man - Wisdom & Knowledge - Judgment - Time - Education - Curiosity - World - Parents - Place - Error & Mistake - Discovery & Invention - Summer - Idea - Obedience - Secrets - Good & Evil - Christianity - View All Sydney J. Harris Quotations

    Related Authors


    Tom Wolfe - Robert Novak - Paul Krugman - Pat Buchanan - John Reed - John Chancellor - Jack Anderson - Art Buchwald - Andrew Tobias - Anderson Cooper


Page 1 of 2 1 2

Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections