Top 140 Sydney J. Harris Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Sydney J. Harris

Featured in: Education Quotes, Learning Quotes, Famous Quotes, Purpose Quotes, Graduation Quotes

2. “The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”

— Sydney J. Harris

3. “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

4. “Happiness is a direction, not a place.”

— Sydney J. Harris

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Happy Wednesday Quotes

5. “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

6. “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

Featured in: Past Quotes

7. “History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.”

— Sydney J. Harris

8. “Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.”

— Sydney J. Harris

9. “When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”

— Sydney J. Harris

10. “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

11. “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

12. “Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.”

— Sydney J. Harris

13. “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

14. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

15. “We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.”

— Sydney J. Harris

16. “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

17. “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

18. “Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

20. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

21. “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

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

— Sydney J. Harris

23. “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

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

— Sydney J. Harris

25. “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

26. “The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we’re saying.”

— Sydney J. Harris

27. “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

28. “Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

30. “Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.”

— Sydney J. Harris

31. “We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.”

— Sydney J. Harris

32. “Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.”

— Sydney J. Harris

33. “Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.”

— Sydney J. Harris

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

34. “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

35. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

37. “Success is just a little more effort.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

39. “Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.”

— Sydney J. Harris

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— Sydney J. Harris

41. “Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists; Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists; Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.”

— Sydney J. Harris

42. “The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.”

— Sydney J. Harris

43. “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

44. “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

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

— Sydney J. Harris

46. “The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

48. “Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.”

— Sydney J. Harris

49. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

50. “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