Quotes from Sydney J. Harris

We must also learn that time itself is indivisible, that every act is a blending of past experience, present situation and future expectancy.

A person is either himself or not himself; is either rooted in his existence or is a fabrication; has either found his humanhood or is still playing with masks and roles and status symbols. And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.

The cynic is goodhearted beneath his facade, whereas the sentimentalist is flint-hearted beneath his.

it calls for deciding things on their own merit, not because you read it or were told it or grew up believing it.

The people who are suspicious of certain things are the very ones who are the most capable of doing that of which they are suspicious.

Being able to do exactly as one pleases is the surest way to remain perpetually unpleased.

The only way to avoid trouble is to avoid living.

The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions—those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time. But those we are fighting and killing are people—men, women and children—not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them.

I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no intention of conforming to the ideal in the parent's mind, they are treated as burdens, shipped away to school or otherwise neglected.

The sullen workman who is afraid of being imposed upon is secretly convinced of his own inferiority--when he has to say, or think, "I'm as good as any man," he doesn't quite believe it himself.

But what is significant is that if you don't want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don't matter, and the reasons are never as 'reasonable' as we like to think they are.

A good talker is sensitive to expression, to tone and color and inflection in human speech. Because he himself is articulate, he can help others to articulate their half-formulated feelings. His mind fills in the gaps, and he becomes, in Socrates' words, a kind of midwife for ideas that are struggling to be born.

The Unconvincibles are the people who are not amenable to reason of any sort. Their minds are not only closed, but bolted and hermetically sealed. In most cases , their beliefs congealed at an early age; by the time they left their teens, they were encased in a rigid framework of thought and feeling, which no evidence or argument can penetrate.

Parents should learn to stop nagging their children about how well they could do "if you only tried more, or cared more." Trying and caring, in specific areas, is built into people; or else it comes to them later, if they mature properly; or it never comes at all. But it is dead certain that no young person was ever motivated by a querulous, disappointed parent more concerned with his own pride than with the child's ultimate self-actualization.

In a real sense, all of us are "the parents" of all young children - because we help shape the culture and determine its values.

Just as communism always begins with an appeal to "humanity" and equality" and ends with inhuman despotism, so does fascism always begin with an appeal to "nationalism" and "individualism," and ends with a military collectivism far worse than the disease it purports to cure.

If you treat someone under your control like a dolt, he will react like a dolt; treat him like an animal, and he will respond like an animal; treat him as an object of contempt, and he will become filled with a self-contempt that must sooner or later erupt in rage, hate and violence.

Yet, advice on what we can do is usually futile—for we will do nothing except applaud the speaker, accept those ideas of his we already agree with, and reject those ideas that run counter to our prejudices.

The whole world is a gigantic legacy. Imagine having to start afresh each generation: who would invent the wheel, devise the lever, construct the alphabet and multiplication table? I could not; could you?

We think the future lies ahead, but its seed is contained in the present. There is no sharp break between the two: the lie we tell today can send us sprawling a year from now; the way we treat our infant determines the way he treats us when he reaches adolescence.

When a man says "I know what I mean, but I can't express it," he generally does not know what he means—for there can be no knowledge without words; there can only be feelings.

Genuine contentment is found in performing tasks that take us out of ourselves, for a purpose greater than ourselves. Only when the personality is subordinated to a higher goal do we attain the serenity we are looking for.

Genuine love for a child, it seems to me, must include a desire for his maturity and ultimately his independence. WAtching a personality unfold is perhaps the deepest pleasure of parenthood; wishing, or trying, to retard this growth is one of the deepest sins.

A child owes respect to a parent, but there is no natural obligation to like a parent - unless the parent makes himself likable as a person.