Quotes from Sydney J. Harris

The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.

Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity

As Bernard Shaw said, "He who can, does: he who cannot, teaches." But, as Sydney J. Harris put it, "Let's revise Shaw's foolish saying to 'He who can, does; he who understands, teaches.

People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.

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

As WArden Lawes once said of convicts, no man can be called a failure until he has tried something he really likes, and fails at it.

Socrates learned to dance when he was seventy, because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected.

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.

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.

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

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.

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

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.

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?

All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.

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

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.

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are.

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

Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?

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.

Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.