Sydney J. Harris

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it read more

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

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's read more

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real read more

Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought read more

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love read more

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".