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You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy. Joseph 'Joe Cargo' Valachi		Tuesday Jul 01, 2025
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

About Sydney J. Harris

Sydney J. Harris

Sydney J. Harris

Sydney J. Harris (14 September 1917 - 8 December 1986) was an American journalist for the Chicago Daily News and later the Chicago Sun-Times. His column, “Strictly Personal,” was syndicated in many newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.

He was born in London but grew up in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He attended high school with Saul Bellow, who was his lifelong friend.

He became a member of the editorial staff of the Chicago Daily News in 1941 and began his column in 1944. His work landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.

He was also a drama critic, teacher, and lecturer, and he received numerous honorary doctorates during his career. In 1980 - 1982 he was the Visiting Scholar at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina. For many years he was a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Harris was married twice and he fathered five children.

Popular Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselvesso how can we know anyone else?

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice that is, until we stop saying 'It got lost,' and say 'I lost it.'

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Men may be divided almost any way we please, but I have found the most useful distinction to be made between those who devote their lives to conjugating the verb 'to be,' and those who spend their lives conjugating the verb 'to have.'

The time to relax is when you dont have time for it.

It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

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.

When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all just feelings.

You may be certain that when a man begins to call himself a 'realist,' he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of.

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.

Filth is always a sign of weakness in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.

The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.

Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.

Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.

Parents and teachers too are woefully short-sighted when they try to protect the child from his mistakes, when they make the 'right answer' more important than the quest for knowledge and good judgment. For what is not learned within ones self cannot be learned from another.

The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.

A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. 'I got it from my good judgment,' he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? 'I got it from my bad judgment.'

Making out an invitation list for a party brings out the worst in everyone. It is then that our most ruthless estimates of the people we know come into play.

The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.

The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.

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.

People far prefer happiness to wisdom, but that is like wanting to be immortal without getting older.

Many people feel 'guilty' about things they shouldn't feel guilty about, in order to shut out feelings of guilt about things they should feel guilty about.

A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living; it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon ones resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination; how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is the one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.

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.

There's no point in burying the hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

Being yourself is not remaining what you were, or being satisfied with what you are. It is the point of departure.

All significant achievement comes from daring, from experiment, from the willingness to risk failure.

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

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