Sydney J. Harris Quotes - Page 3

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

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

Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. Happiness is a direction, not a place.

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Marriages we regard as the happiest are those in which each of the partners believes he or she got the best of it.

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

Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

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.

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.

We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.

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 have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'

The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught.

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