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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.
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
Disappointed
Bitter
Merely
Lessons
Future
Fear
Cynic
Past
Permanently
Also
Reads
More quotes by 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
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Sydney J. Harris
Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.
Sydney J. Harris
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
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.
Sydney J. Harris
We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.
Sydney J. Harris
There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
Sydney J. Harris
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
Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
Sydney J. Harris
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
If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.
Sydney J. Harris
Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
God cannot be solemn, or he would not have blessed man with the incalculable gift of laughter.
Sydney J. Harris
Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
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.
Sydney J. Harris
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