Quote

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

Sydney J. Harris

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Nutshell
Brevity
Belongs
Ethics
Discovery
Philosophy
Moral
Values

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with credit cards.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, You Only Live Once.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris