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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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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Failures
Question
Acquire
Parent
Observation
Decision
Begins
Wisdom
Relationships
Child
Decisions
Children
Independent
Mind
Omnipotence
Make
Begin

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Sydney J. Harris
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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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The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.
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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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
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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
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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
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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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Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
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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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
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The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
Sydney J. Harris
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Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.'
Sydney J. Harris
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Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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We truly possess only what we are able to renounce otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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God cannot be solemn, or he would not have blessed man with the incalculable gift of laughter.
Sydney J. Harris
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Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy.
Sydney J. Harris