243 Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

Man’s unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

A loser says that’s the way it’s always been done. A winner says there ought to be a better way.

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.

Maturity begins when we’re content to feel we’re right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.

Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil”, it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light – and the next tunnel.

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.

There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.