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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

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And Most Of The

Sydney J. Harris

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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.

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American Parents, On The Whole, Do Not Want Their Sons To Be Artisans Or Craftsmen, But Business Or Professional People. As A Result, Millions Of Youngsters Are Being Prepared For Careers They Have Little Aptitude For - And Little Interest In Except For Dubious Prestige.

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A Person Is Either Himself Or Not Himself; Is Either Rooted In His Existence Or Is A Fabrication; Has Either Found His Humanhood Or Is Still Playing With Masks And Roles And Status Symbols. And Nobody Is More Aware Of This Difference (although Unconsciously) Than A Child. Only An Authentic Person Can Evoke A Good Response In The Core Of The Other Person; Only Person Is Resonant To Person.

You May Be Sure That When A Man Begins To Call Himself A Realist He Is Preparing To Do Something That He Is Secretly Ashamed Of Doing.

Much As A Teacher May Wince At The Thought, He Is Also An Entertainer—for Unless He Can Hold His Audience, He Cannot Really Instruct Or Edify Them.

When A Baseball Player Makes An Error, It Goes Into The Record And Is Published. How Many Of Us Could Stand This Sort Of Daily Scrutiny?

Good Teaching Must Be Slow Enough So That It Is Not Confusing, And Fast Enough So That It Is Not Boring.

All Our Efforts To Attain Immortality-by Statesmanship, By Conquest, By Science Or The Arts-are Equally Vain In The Long Run, Because The Long Run Is Longer Than Any Of Us Can Imagine.

Filth Is Always A Sign Of Weakness - In The Mouth Of The User And In The Mind Of The Writer.

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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.

History Repeats Itself, But In Such Cunning Disguise That We Never Detect The Resemblance Until The Damage Is Done.

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Nobody Can Misunderstand A Child As Much As His Own Parents.

Genealogy: A Perverse Preoccupation Of Those Who Seek To Demonstrate That Their Forebears Were Better People Than They Are.

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Most People Are Mirrors, Reflecting The Moods And Emotions Of The Times; Few Are Windows, Bringing Light To Bear On The Dark Corners Where Troubles Fester. The Whole Purpose Of Education Is To Turn Mirrors Into Windows.

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Intolerance Is The Most Socially Acceptable Form Of Egotism, For It Permits Us To Assume Superiority Without Personal Boasting.

The Founder Of Every Creed From Jesus Christ To Karl Marx, Would Be Appalled To Return To Earth And See What Has Been Made Of That Creed, Not By Its Enemies, But By Its Most Devoted Adherents.

Many People Know How To Work Hard; Many Others Know How To Play Well; But The Rarest Talent In The World Is The Ability To Introduce Elements Of Playfulness Into Work, And To Put Some Constructive Labor Into Our Leisure.

The Whole Purpose Of Education Is To Turn Mirrors Into Windows.

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The Principal Difference Between Love And Hate Is That Love Is A Irradiation, And Hate Is A Concentration. Love Makes Everything Lovely; Hate Concentrates Itself On The Object Of Its Hatred.

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Enemy Of Progress

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Almost No One Is Foolish Enough To Imagine That He Automatically Deserves Great Success In Any Field Of Activity; Yet Almost Everyone Believes That He Automatically Deserves Success In Marriage.

Congratulations

"terrorism" Is What We Call The Violence Of The Weak, And We Condemn It; "war" Is What We Call The Violence Of The Strong, And We Glorify It.

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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.

It's Surprising How Many Persons Go Through Life Without Ever Recognizing That Their Feelings Toward Other People Are Largely Determined By Their Feelings Toward Themselves, And If You're Not Comfortable Within Yourself, You Can't Be Comfortable With Others.

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Law Is Order In Liberty, And Without Order Liberty Is Social Chaos.

Those Obsessed With Health Are Not Healthy; The First Requisite Of Good Health Is A Certain Calculated Carelessness About Oneself.

Somebody Who Never Got Over The Embarrassing Fact That He Was Born In Bed With A Lady.

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A Truly Successful Person Knows How To Overcome The Past, Use The Present, And Prepare For The Future-but Unless We Can First Surmount The Past, We Cannot Effectively Cope With Either The Present Or The Future.

Any Philosophy That Can Be Put In A Nutshell Belongs There.

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.

Nobody Can Be So Amusingly Arrogant As A Young Man Who Has Just Discovered An Old Idea And Thinks It Is His Own.

The Acceptance Of Ambiguity Implies More Than The Commonplace Understanding That Some Good Things And Some Bad Things Happen To Us. It Means That We Know That Good And Evil Are Inextricably Intermixed In Human Affairs; That They Contain, And Sometimes Embrace, Their Opposites; That Success May Involve Failure Of A Different Kind, And Failure May Be A Kind Of Triumph.

Sincerity That Thinks It Is The Sole Possessor Of The Truth Is A Deadlier Sin Than Hypocrisy, Which Knows Better.

Ignorance Per Se Is Not Nearly As Dangerous As Ignorance Of Ignorance.

It Is Not Only Useless, It Is Harmful, To Believe In Oneself Until One Truly Knows Oneself. And To Know Oneself Means To Accept Our Moments Of Insanity, Of Eccentricity, Of Childishness And Blindness.

The Public Examination Of Homosexuality In Our Contemporary Life Is Still So Coated With Distasteful Moral Connotations That Even A Reviewer Is Bound To Wonder Uneasily Why He Was Selected To Evaluate A Book On The Subject, And To Assert Defensively At The Outset That He Is Happily Married, The Father Of Four Children And The One-time Adornment Of His College Boxing, Track And Tennis Teams.

Any Creed Whose Basic Doctrines Do Not Include Respect For The Creeds Of Others, Is Simply Power Politics Masquerading As Philosophy.

There Are Always Too Many Democratic Congressmen, Too Many Republican Congressmen, And Never Enough U.s. Congressmen.

Christianity Is Not A "spiritual" Religion, Like Some Religions Of The East. It Is An Intensely "practical" Religion, Having Its Moral Roots In The Practicality Of Judaism. It Was Not Designed To Change The Way Men Think Or Believe As Much As To Change The Way They Act.

The Loner May Be Respected, But He Is Always Resented By His Colleagues, For He Seems To Be Passing A Critical Judgment On Them, When He May Be Simply Making A Limiting Statement About Himself.

It's Odd, And A Little Unsettling, To Reflect Upon The Fact That English Is The Only Major Language In Which "i" Is Capitalized; In Many Other Languages "you" Is Capitalized And The "i" Is Lower Case." --

If A Small Thing Has The Power To Make You Angry, Does That Not Indicate Something About Your Size?

The Paradox Of Friendship Is That It Is Both The Strongest Thing In The World And The Most Fragile. Wild Horses Cannot Separate Friends, But Whining Words Can. A Man Will Lay Down His Life For His Friend But Will Not Sacrifice His Eardrums.

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 Nightmare.

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