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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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Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
Art
Efforts
Long
Arts
Vain
Longer
Statesmanship
Effort
Conquest
Imagine
Attain
Science
Immortality
Running
Equally

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
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When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.
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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.
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When we inform, we lead from strength when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.
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Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
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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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.
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The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
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Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
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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 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
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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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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
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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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Men make counterfeit money in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
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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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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Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer this is how commencement speakers are caught.
Sydney J. Harris
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The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good. This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.
Sydney J. Harris
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More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
Sydney J. Harris