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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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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Side
Opponent
Thing
Sides
Swings
Much
Face
Opponents
Faces
Appreciation
Next
Escape
Hatch
Argument
Gracefully
Without
Loss
Apparent
Right
Leave
Swing
Important
More quotes by Sydney J. Harris
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
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As WArden Lawes once said of convicts, no man can be called a failure until he has tried something he really likes, and fails at it.
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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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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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Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
Sydney J. Harris
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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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
Those obsessed with health are not healthy the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
Sydney J. Harris
Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.
Sydney J. Harris
Being yourself is not remaining what you were, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure and far from the goal.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?
Sydney J. Harris
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
Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
Sydney J. Harris
There is no such thing as an atrocity in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
Sydney J. Harris
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
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.
Sydney J. Harris
