Sydney J. Harris was an American journalist for the Chicago Daily News and, later, the Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote 11 books and his weekday column, “Strictly Personal,” was syndicated in approximately 200 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. This Sydney J Harris quotes will motivate you.
BestSydney J Harris Quotes
- “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
- “History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” ~ 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
- “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
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“Time is love, above all else. It is the most precious commodity in the world and should be lavished on those we care most about.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams.
Happiness is a direction, not a place.” ~ Sydney J. Harris -
“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?'” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.”” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“Happiness is a direction, not a place.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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
- “No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates, and his enemies.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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?” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“Maturity begins when we’re content to feel we’re right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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
- “Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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
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“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure; and we learn too late in life that our acts of deception are irrevocable – they may be forgiven, but they cannot be forgotten by their victims.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“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
- “Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?'” ~ 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
- “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 person until they learned whether that person fell in through his or her own fault or not.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.'” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “When a baseball player makes an error, it goes into the record and is published. How many of us could stand this sort of daily scrutiny?” ~ Sydney J Harris quotes
- “Isolation always perverts; when a man lives only among his own sort, he soon begins to believe that his sort are the best sort. This attitude breeds both the arrogance of the conservative and the bitterness of the radical.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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?” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “If you want to know what a man’s character is really like… ask him to tell you the living person he most admires – for hero worship is the truest index of a man’s private nature.” ~ 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
- “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 one’s self cannot be learned from another.” ~ 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
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“Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “The founder of every creed from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, would be appalled to return to earth and see what has been made of that creed, not by its enemies, but by its most devoted adherents.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
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“Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.” ~ 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
- “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.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
- “We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.” ~ Sydney J. Harris
