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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

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
Stagnation
False
Progress
Greatest
Enemy

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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.
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Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
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It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which I is capitalized in many other languages You is capitalized and the i is lower case. --
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Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
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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.
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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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sydney J. Harris
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A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you -- out of love -- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
Sydney J. Harris
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Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a necessary evil, it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
Sydney J. Harris
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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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Many people know how to work hard many others know how to play well but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.
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The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
Sydney J. Harris
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Never let your fears be the boundaries of your dreams. Happiness is a direction, not a place.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
Sydney J. Harris
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Character is something you forge for yourself temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
Sydney J. Harris
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Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.
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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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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