Quotes by Sydney J. Harris

About Sydney J. Harris:

Sydney J. Harris was an American journalist for the Chicago Daily News and, later, the Chicago Sun-Times. He wrote 11 books and his weekday column, “Strictly Personal,” was syndicated in approximately 200 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.

Sydney J. Harris

Genuine love for a child, it seems to me, must include a desire for his maturity and ultimately his independence. WAtching a personality unfold is perhaps the deepest pleasure of parenthood; wishing, or trying, to retard this growth is one of the dee...

Sydney J. Harris

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming ...

Sydney J. Harris

And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; only when we allow his independence can he then freely offer us love and respect, without conflict and without resentment. It is th...

Sydney J. Harris

I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no inte...

Sydney J. Harris

All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he i...

Sydney J. Harris

Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age; neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly see...

Sydney J. Harris

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'

Sydney J. Harris

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

Sydney J. Harris

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

Sydney J. Harris

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong.

Sydney J. Harris

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

Sydney J. Harris

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

Sydney J. Harris

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.

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

When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.

Sydney J. Harris

Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.

Sydney J. Harris

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

Sydney J. Harris

Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

Sydney J. Harris

When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

Sydney J. Harris

Author Bio

  • NameSydney J. Harris
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist
  • AliasesSydney Harris
  • BornSeptember 14, 1917
  • DiedDecember 8, 1986
  • ProfessionJournalist