Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.

When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

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

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

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?

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

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.

Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

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

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

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

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

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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'.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

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