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Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
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
Demonstrate
Seek
Better
People
Forebears
Genealogy
Perverse
Preoccupation
More quotes by Sydney J. Harris
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
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
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
Sydney J. Harris
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
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
Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris
Christianity is not a spiritual religion, like some religions of the east. It is an intensely practical religion, having its moral roots in the practicality of judaism. It was not designed to change the way men think or believe as much as to change the way they act.
Sydney J. Harris
Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
Sydney J. Harris
Character is something you forge for yourself temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify.
Sydney J. Harris
The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
Sydney J. Harris
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
We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.
Sydney J. Harris
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
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
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
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
Sydney J. Harris
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Sydney J. Harris
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
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
Sydney J. Harris
Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
Sydney J. Harris
