Sydney J. Harris Quotes

127 Sourced Quotes

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.

Sydney J. Harris
The unfailing sign of a poor executive is that he reprimands his subordinates in public and commends them in private, when he should be doing exactly the opposite in order to elicit their best efforts.

Sydney J. Harris
It is the fear of being called a coward that makes most men courageous in a crisis; but real courage, which is rare, consists in doing what you know is right, regardless of what men may call you.

Sydney J. Harris
What a lot of damage a little word can do, if you don't understand what you are saying or what someone else is saying. Entire religious sects have been formed — and persecuted — because of disagreement about the meaning of a word.

Sydney J. Harris
The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.

Sydney J. Harris
The best combination of parents consists of a father who is gentle beneath his firmness, and a mother who is firm beneath her gentleness.

Sydney J. Harris
Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure; and we learn too late in life that our acts of deception are irrevocable - they may be forgiven, but they cannot be forgotten by their victims.

Sydney J. Harris
The loner may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself.

Sydney J. Harris
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

Sydney J. Harris
Every rule in the book can be broken, except one - be who you are, and become all you were meant to be....

Sydney J. Harris
The founder of every creed from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, would be appalled to return to earth and see what has been made of that creed, not by its enemies, but by its most devoted adherents.

Sydney J. Harris
Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.

Sydney J. Harris
History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

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

Sydney J. Harris
The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.

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

Sydney J. Harris
Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do.

Sydney J. Harris
If you want to know what a man's character is really like... ask him to tell you the living person he most admires - for hero worship is the truest index of a man's private nature.

Sydney J. Harris
What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle...

Sydney J. Harris
The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational.

Sydney J. Harris
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.

Sydney J. Harris
Just about the only interruption we don't object to is applause.

Sydney J. Harris
A loser says that's the way it's always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.

Sydney J. Harris
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.

Sydney J. Harris
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.

Sydney J. Harris
The frightening thing about bigotry is that it creates, shapes and solidifies the very element it dislikes.

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

Sydney J. Harris
Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

Sydney J. Harris
Any creed whose basic doctrines do not include respect for the creeds of others, is simply power politics masquerading as philosophy.

Sydney J. Harris
If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.

Sydney J. Harris