243 Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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.

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.

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

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

It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, 'the greatest', but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

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

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.

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.

Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.