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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
Witty
Powers
Asking
Ought
Democracy
System
Persists
Whether
Persist
Political
Voting

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We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'
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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.
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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.
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All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.
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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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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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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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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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Character is something you forge for yourself temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
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If you want to know what a man's character is really like... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires - for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature.
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Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
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When a baseball player makes an error, it goes into the record and is published. How many of us could stand this sort of daily scrutiny?
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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?
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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.
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There is no such thing as an atrocity in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
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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.
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The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good. This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.
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When we inform, we lead from strength when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.
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Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
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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.
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