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We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

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
Passions
Fuel
Suits
Prejudice
Passion
Belief
Believe
Fuels
Like
Prejudices

More quotes by 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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Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.
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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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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There is no such thing as an atrocity in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
Sydney J. Harris
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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
Sydney J. Harris
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The founder of every creed from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, would be appalled to return to earth and see what has been made of that creed, not by its enemies, but by its most devoted adherents.
Sydney J. Harris
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Those obsessed with health are not healthy the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
Sydney J. Harris
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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
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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
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If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Sydney J. Harris
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Why do so many people yearn for an eternal life when they don't even know what to do with themselves in this brief one?
Sydney J. Harris
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Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.
Sydney J. Harris
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Nuclear war is inevitable, says the pessimists Nuclear war is impossible, says the optimists Nuclear war is inevitable unless we make it impossible, says the realists.
Sydney J. Harris
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A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
Sydney J. Harris
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Any creed whose basic doctrines do not include respect for the creeds of others, is simply power politics masquerading as philosophy.
Sydney J. Harris
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It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.
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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Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure and we learn too late in life that our acts of deception are irrevocable - they may be forgiven, but they cannot be forgotten by their victims.
Sydney J. Harris