Top 140 Sydney J. Harris Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “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

52. “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

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

— Sydney J. Harris

54. “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

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

— Sydney J. Harris

56. “The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother – which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.”

— Sydney J. Harris

57. “A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you – out of love – takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.”

— Sydney J. Harris

58. “But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.”

— Sydney J. Harris

59. “Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.”

— Sydney J. Harris

60. “Why do so many people yearn for an eternal life when they don’t even know what to do with themselves in this brief one?”

— Sydney J. Harris

61. “By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

63. “You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

66. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

67. “Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don’t understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don’t understand as the product of a deranged mind?”

— Sydney J. Harris

68. “Being yourself is not remaining where you are, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure.”

— Sydney J. Harris

69. “People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault.”

— Sydney J. Harris

70. “Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer – for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.”

— Sydney J. Harris

71. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

73. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

74. “In a real sense, all of us are “the parents” of all young children – because we help shape the culture and determine its values.”

— Sydney J. Harris

75. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

76. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

77. “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’”

— Sydney J. Harris

78. “We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.”

— Sydney J. Harris

79. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

80. “Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.”

— Sydney J. Harris

81. “Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.”

— Sydney J. Harris

82. “When we have “second thoughts” about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.”

— Sydney J. Harris

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

83. “Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

85. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

86. “The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred.”

— Sydney J. Harris

87. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

88. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

89. “People decline invitations when they are “indisposed” physically, and I wish they would do likewise when they feel indisposed emotionally. A person has no more right to attend a party with a head full of venom than with a throat full of virus.”

— Sydney J. Harris

90. “But what is significant is that if you don’t want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don’t matter, and the reasons are never as ‘reasonable’ as we like to think they are.”

— Sydney J. Harris

91. “Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.”

— Sydney J. Harris

92. “Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.”

— Sydney J. Harris

93. “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.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

95. “No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.”

— Sydney J. Harris

96. “There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.”

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

98. “We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.”

— Sydney J. Harris

99. “Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’”

— Sydney J. Harris

100. “The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.”

— Sydney J. Harris