Sydney J. Harris Quotes - Page 4

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

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.

The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel.

Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.

Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?

There is no such thing as an "atrocity" in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.

As the horsepower in modern automobiles steadily rises, the congestion of traffic steadily lowers the average possible speed of your car. This is known as Progress.

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.

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

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.

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.

Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.

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.

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.

The profound immoralities of our time are cruelty, indifference, injustice and the use of others as means rather than ends in themselves.

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

The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.

This is a lesson mankind has not yet learned. We identify, and stratify, and treat persons largely on the basis of their accidental (physical) characteristics, which have no deeper meaning.

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

Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.

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?

What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.

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.