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.

— Sydney J. Harris

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

— Sydney J. Harris

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 man until they learned whether he fell in through his own fault or not.

— Sydney J. Harris

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

— Sydney J. Harris

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

— Sydney J. Harris

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

— Sydney J. Harris

The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.

— Sydney J. Harris

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather a lust of the total ego for recognition even for eminence. More than elsewhere everybody here wants to be Somebody.

— Sydney J. Harris

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

— Sydney J. Harris

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

— Sydney J. Harris