Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sydney J. Harris
Age: 69 †
Born: 1917
Born: September 14
Died: 1986
Died: December 8
Journalist
London
England
Sydney Harris
People
Matter
Ultimate
Heretic
Feel
Taste
Agnostic
Feels
Turns
Subjective
Real
Religion
Theology
Long
Often
Claim
Believe
Makes
Decent
Furnishings
Good
Doesn
Atheist
Murmur
Like
Truth
Claims
Robs

More quotes by Sydney J. Harris

Image
Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you -- out of love -- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Those obsessed with health are not healthy the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Men make counterfeit money in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
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
Image
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
Sydney J. Harris
Image
Skepticism is not an end in itself it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
Sydney J. Harris