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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

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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Whether
Persist
Political
Voting
Witty
Powers
Asking
Ought
Democracy
System
Persists

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Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
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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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We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.
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American parents, on the whole, do not want their sons to be artisans or craftsmen, but business or professional people. As a result, millions of youngsters are being prepared for careers they have little aptitude for - and little interest in except for dubious prestige.
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Many married couples separate because they quarrel incessantly, but just as many separate because they were never honest enough or courageous enough to quarrel when they should have.
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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.
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Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.
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Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
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We truly possess only what we are able to renounce otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
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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.
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Many people feel guilty about things they shouldn't feel guilty about, in order to shut out feelings of guilt about things they should feel guilty about.
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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.
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Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with credit cards.
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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'.
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As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood -- and an almost total inability to practice it.
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A truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future.
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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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.
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A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
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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.
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