Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

“Ninety percent 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 ...”

“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.”

“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.”

“The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere it is not this sort of licence that distinguishes New York. It is rather a lust of the total ego for recognition even for eminence. More than elsewh...”

“Ninety percent 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 str...”

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

“In shape, it is perfectly elliptical. In texture, it is smooth and lustrous. In color, it ranges from pale alabaster to warm terra cotta. And in taste, it outstrips all the lush pomegranates that S...”

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

“The public examination of homosexuality in our contemporary life is still so coated with distasteful moral connotations that even a reviewer is bound to wonder uneasily why he was selected to evalu...”

“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 mi...”

“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.”

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

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

“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 ...”

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably excuses himself to himself by saying, I'm only human, after all.”

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

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

“A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.”

“We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice — that is, until we have stopped saying It got lost, and say, I lost it.”

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