Quotes by Sydney Harris

• When I hear somebody say 'Life is hard', I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?'
• People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.
• Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
• Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
• Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
• The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The time to relax is when you don't have time for 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.
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
• There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
• When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
• When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.
• The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
• The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
• 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.
• Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
• The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
• 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.
• Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
• Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
• Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
• Happiness is a direction, not a place.
• If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
• Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, "Why not?" and the other, "Why bother?"
• A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
• Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
• 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?
• Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
• Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
• Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
• 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.
• Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
• Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
• Success is mounting an escalator while leaving your ties better dressed than you are.