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Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.

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
Acceptance
Slur
Slurs
Elitism
Discernment
Directed
Mediocrity
Merit

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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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Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
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No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his philosophy of life until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
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A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
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It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.
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Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.
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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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Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
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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.
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It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.
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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.
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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
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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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Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
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Those obsessed with health are not healthy the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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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.
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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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Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.
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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. --
Sydney J. Harris