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Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?

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
Accepting
Rejecting
Willing
Formula
Understand
Formulas
Art
Mathematical
Form
Product
Mind
Brilliant
Accept
Products
Deranged

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We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
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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.
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All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
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The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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?
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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 truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future.
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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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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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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.
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Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
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There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
Sydney J. Harris
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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.
Sydney J. Harris