Quote

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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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Much
Sides
Swings
Face
Opponents
Faces
Appreciation
Next
Escape
Hatch
Without
Argument
Gracefully
Right
Loss
Apparent
Important
Leave
Swing
Thing
Side
Opponent

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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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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There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
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A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. I got it from my good judgment, he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? I got it from my bad judgment.
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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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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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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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Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.
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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.
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Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.
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Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with credit cards.
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Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.
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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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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?
Sydney J. Harris
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No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his philosophy of life until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
Sydney J. Harris
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And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.
Sydney J. Harris
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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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We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
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There is no such thing as an atrocity in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
Sydney J. Harris