Sydney J. Harris Quotes

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

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.

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

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

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.

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

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

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.

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.

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 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 knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

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

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.

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."

There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.

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

As we grow older, we should learn that these are two quite different things. Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable.

The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'

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

"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.

Why do so many people yearn for an eternal life when they don't even know what to do with themselves in this brief one?

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are.

When we inform, we lead from strength; when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.

We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.

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.

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

If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.

The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

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

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?

As WArden Lawes once said of convicts, no man can be called a failure until he has tried something he really likes, and fails at it.

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

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

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

Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder - and turn quickly to my typewriter.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, but the perpetual human predicament is that the answer soon poses its own problems.

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

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

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

Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

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

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

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

We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.