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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
Powers
Asking
Ought
Democracy
System
Persists
Whether
Persist
Political
Voting
Witty

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The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
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Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
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Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.
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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.
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Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
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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.
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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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Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.
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Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams. Happiness is a direction, not a place.
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Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
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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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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.
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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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Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
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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.
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Parents - and teachers too - are woefully short-sighted when they try to protect the child from his mistakes, when they make the right answer more important than the quest for knowledge and good judgment. For what is not learned within one's self cannot be learned from another.
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This is a lesson mankind has not yet learned. We identify, and stratify, and treat persons largely on the basis of their accidental (physical) characteristics, which have no deeper meaning.
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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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Skepticism is not an end in itself it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
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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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