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.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Happiness is a direction, not a place.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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 Quote

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, "Why not?" and the other, "Why bother?"
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Ninety percent 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 ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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 Quote

Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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 Quote

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong".
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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

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

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
- Sydney J. Harris Quote

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