243 Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

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.

People who won’t help others in trouble “because they got into trouble through their own fault” would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning person until they learned whether that person fell in through his or her own fault or not.

At it’s highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach – it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student’s mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.

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.

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.

A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. “I got it from my good judgment,” he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? “I got it from my bad judgment.”

No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his “philosophy of life” until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.

As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood – and an almost total inability to practice it.

The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we’re saying.