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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

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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Almost
Believes
Success
Foolish
Everyone
Field
Enough
Deserve
Great
Fields
Anniversary
Believe
Activity
Congratulations
Marriage
Automatically
Imagine
Deserves

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
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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.
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Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.
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Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
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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
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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
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Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
Sydney J. Harris
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Terrorism is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it war is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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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
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Character is something you forge for yourself temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
Sydney J. Harris
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The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational.
Sydney J. Harris
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Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.
Sydney J. Harris
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Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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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
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If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
Sydney J. Harris
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A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon one's resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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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