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Those Who Imagine That The World Is Against Them Have Generally Conspired To Make It True.
-Sydney J. Harris
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Those Who Imagine That

Sydney J. Harris
...
Those Who Imagine That The World Is Against Them Have Generally Conspired To Make It True.

Understanding the Quote: "those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired..."

This quote by Sydney J. Harris reflects deeply on the theme of imagination. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Imagination, World, Imagine, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Sydney J. Harris interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Sydney J. Harris

Sydney J. Harris is celebrated for insightful thoughts on imagination and world. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Imagination
World
Imagine
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Parents - And Teachers Too - Are Woefully Short-sighted When They Try To Protect The Child From His Mistakes, When They Make The "right Answer" More Important Than The Quest For Knowledge And Good Judgment. For What Is Not Learned Within One's Self Cannot Be Learned From Another.
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Why Do So Many People Yearn For An Eternal Life When They Don't Even Know What To Do With Themselves In This Brief One?
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The Best Combination Of Parents Consists Of A Father Who Is Gentle Beneath His Firmness, And A Mother Who Is Firm Beneath Her Gentleness.
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Character Is Something You Forge For Yourself; Temperament Is Something You Are Born With And Can Only Slightly Modify.
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Genealogy: A Perverse Preoccupation Of Those Who Seek To Demonstrate That Their Forebears Were Better People Than They Are.
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Good Teaching Must Be Slow Enough So That It Is Not Confusing, And Fast Enough So That It Is Not Boring.
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Marriages We Regard As The Happiest Are Those In Which Each Of The Partners Believes He Or She Got The Best Of It.
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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.
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Any Creed Whose Basic Doctrines Do Not Include Respect For The Creeds Of Others, Is Simply Power Politics Masquerading As Philosophy.
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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.
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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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Many Married Couples Separate Because They Quarrel Incessantly, But Just As Many Separate Because They Were Never Honest Enough Or Courageous Enough To Quarrel When They Should Have.
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Nuclear War Is Inevitable, Says The Pessimists; Nuclear War Is Impossible, Says The Optimists; Nuclear War Is Inevitable Unless We Make It Impossible, Says The Realists.
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As Warden Lawes Once Said Of Convicts, No Man Can Be Called A Failure Until He Has Tried Something He Really Likes, And Fails At It.
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The Reason That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Is That Fiction Has To Have A Rational Thread Running Through It In Order To Be Believable, Whereas Reality May Be Totally Irrational.
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Many People Feel "guilty" About Things They Shouldn't Feel Guilty About, In Order To Shut Out Feelings Of Guilt About Things They Should Feel Guilty About.
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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.
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We Truly Possess Only What We Are Able To Renounce; Otherwise, We Are Simply Possessed By Our Possessions.
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Between The Semi-educated, Who Offer Simplistic Answers To Complex Questions, And The Overeducated, Who Offer Complicated Answers To Simple Questions, It Is A Wonder That Any Questions Get Satisfactorily Answered At All.
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When We Inform, We Lead From Strength; When We Communicate, We Lead From Weakness—and It Is Precisely This Confession Of Mortality That Engages The Ears, Heads And Hearts Of Those We Want To Enlist As Allies In A Common Cause.
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As The Horsepower In Modern Automobiles Steadily Rises, The Congestion Of Traffic Steadily Lowers The Average Possible Speed Of Your Car. This Is Known As Progress.
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Honesty Consists Of The Unwillingness To Lie To Others; Maturity, Which Is Equally Hard To Attain, Consists Of The Unwillingness To Lie To Oneself.
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Sometimes The Best, And Only Effective, Way To Kill An Idea Is To Put It Into Practice.
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Democracy Is The Only System That Persists In Asking The Powers That Be Whether They Are The Powers That Ought To Be.
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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.
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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.
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We Can Often Endure An Extra Pound Of Pain Far More Easily Than We Can Suffer The Withdrawal Of An Ounce Of Accustomed Pleasure.
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Time Is Love, Above All Else. It Is The Most Precious Commodity In The World And Should Be Lavished On Those We Care Most About.
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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.
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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." --
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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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History Repeats Itself, But In Such Cunning Disguise That We Never Detect The Resemblance Until The Damage Is Done.
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"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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Elitism Is The Slur Directed At Merit By Mediocrity.
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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.
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There Is No Such Thing As An "atrocity" In Warfare That Is Greater Than The Atrocity Of Warfare Itself.
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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.
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There's No Point In Burying A Hatchet If You're Going To Put Up A Marker On The Site.
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If You Want To Know What A Man's Character Is Really Like... Ask Him To Tell You The Living Person He Most Admires - For Hero Worship Is The Truest Index Of A Man's Private Nature.
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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.
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Sincerity That Thinks It Is The Sole Possessor Of The Truth Is A Deadlier Sin Than Hypocrisy, Which Knows Better.
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Confidence, Once Lost Or Betrayed, Can Never Be Restored Again To The Same Measure; And We Learn Too Late In Life That Our Acts Of Deception Are Irrevocable - They May Be Forgiven, But They Cannot Be Forgotten By Their Victims.
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Middle Age Is That Perplexing Time Of Life When We Hear Two Voices Calling Us, One Saying, 'why Not?' And The Other, 'why Bother?'
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We Evaluate Others With A Godlike Justice, But We Want Them To Evaluate Us With A Godlike Compassion.
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Those Who Imagine That The World Is Against Them Have Generally Conspired To Make It True.
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More Trouble Is Caused In This World By Indiscreet Answers Than By Indiscreet Questions.
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World
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Why Are We Willing To Accept A New Mathematical Formula We Don't Understand As The Product Of A Brilliant Mind, While Rejecting A New Art Form We Don't Understand As The Product Of A Deranged Mind?
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When I Hear Somebody Sigh, 'life Is Hard,' I Am Always Tempted To Ask, 'compared To What?'
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Once We Assuage Our Conscience By Calling Something A "necessary Evil", It Begins To Look More And More Necessary And Less And Less Evil.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Greatest Educational Dogma Is Also Its Greatest Fallacy: The Belief That What Must Be Learned Can Necessarily Be Taught.
Educational
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People Who Think They're Generous To A Fault Usually Think That's Their Only Fault.
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It Wants To Be, And Proclaims Itself To Be, 'the Greatest', But Greatness Is Not Required Of A Country; Only Goodness Is.
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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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Careers
People
Every Rule In The Book Can Be Broken, Except One - Be Who You Are, And Become All You Were Meant To Be.
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Effectiveness
Broken
Almost Every Man Looks More So In A Belted Trench Coat.
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Looks
Coats
Knowledge Fills A Large Brain; It Merely Inflates A Small One.
Knowledge
Brain
Regret For The Things We Did Can Be Tempered By Time; It Is Regret For The Things We Did Not Do That Is Inconsolable.
Love
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Nobody Can Be So Amusingly Arrogant As A Young Man Who Has Just Discovered An Old Idea And Thinks It Is His Own.
Men
Thinking
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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.
Failure
Mean
Acceptance
The Two Words 'information' And 'communication' Are Often Used Interchangeably, But They Signify Quite Different Things. Information Is Giving Out; Communication Is Getting Through.
Communication
Two
Giving
Maturity Begins When We're Content To Feel We're Right About Something Without Feeling The Necessity To Prove Someone Else Wrong.
Inspirational
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Law Is Order In Liberty, And Without Order Liberty Is Social Chaos.
Order
Law
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The Main Discomfort In Being A Middle-of-the-roader Is That You Get Sideswiped By Partisans Going In Both Directions.
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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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Self Esteem
If You're Not Part Of The Solution, You're Part Of The Problem, But The Perpetual Human Predicament Is That The Answer Soon Poses Its Own Problems.
Answers
Problem
Predicaments
People Decline Invitations When They Are "indisposed" Physically, And I Wish They Would Do Likewise When They Feel Indisposed Emotionally. A Person Has No More Right To Attend A Party With A Head Full Of Venom Than With A Throat Full Of Virus.
Party
People
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Many Persons Of High Intelligence Have Notoriously Poor Judgement.
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Judgement
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Nothing Is As Easy To Make As A Promise This Winter To Do Something Next Summer; This Is How Commencement Speakers Are Caught.
Summer
Winter
Keeping Promises
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.
Hard Work
Play
People
Agnosticism Is A Perfectly Respectable And Tenable Philosophical Position; It Is Not Dogmatic And Makes No Pronouncements About The Ultimate Truths Of The Universe. It Remains Open To Evidence And Persuasion; Lacking Faith, It Nevertheless Does Not Deride Faith. Atheism, On The Other Hand, Is As Unyielding And Dogmatic About Religious Belief As True Believers Are About Heathens. It Tries To Use Reason To Demolish A Structure That Is Not Built Upon Reason.
Religious
Philosophical
Hands
Enemies, As Well As Lovers, Come To Resemble Each Other Over A Period Of Time.
Enemy
Lovers
Time Love
Usually, If We Hate, It Is The Shadow Of The Person That We Hate, Rather Than The Substance. We May Hate A Person Because He Reminds Us Of Someone We Feared And Disliked When Younger; Or Because We See In Him Some Gross Caricature Of What We Find Repugnant In Ourself; Or Because He Symbolizes An Attitude That Seems To Threaten Us.
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Hate
Shadow
Never Let Your Fears Be The Boundaries Of Your Dreams. Happiness Is A Direction, Not A Place.
Dream
Follow Your Dreams
Boundaries
We Have Not Passed That Subtle Line Between Childhood And Adulthood Until We Have Stopped Saying 'it Got Lost,' And Say, 'i Lost It.'
Education
Responsibility
Parenting
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.
New York
Ego
Lust
Skepticism Is Not An End In Itself; It Is A Tool For The Discovery Of Truths.
Truth
Discovery
Tools
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."
Wise
Wisdom
Men
The Truest Test Of Independent Judgment Is Being Able To Dislike Someone Who Admires Us, And To Admire Someone Who Dislikes Us.
Independent
Dislike Someone
Independence
Those Obsessed With Health Are Not Healthy; The First Requisite Of Good Health Is A Certain Calculated Carelessness About Oneself.
Healthy
Firsts
Care
The Profound Immoralities Of Our Time Are Cruelty, Indifference, Injustice And The Use Of Others As Means Rather Than Ends In Themselves.
Mean
Profound
Use
Making Out An Invitation List For A Party Brings Out The Worst In Everyone. It Is Then That Our Most Ruthless Estimates Of The People We Know Come Into Play.
Party
Play
People
Any Philosophy That Can Be Put In A Nutshell Belongs There.
Philosophy
Discovery
Ethics
Somebody Who Never Got Over The Embarrassing Fact That He Was Born In Bed With A Lady.
Bed
Facts
Embarrassing
By The Time A Man Asks You For Advice, He Has Generally Made Up His Mind What He Wants To Do, And Is Looking For Confirmation Rather Than Counseling.
Men
Advice
Mind
A Cynic Is Not Merely One Who Reads Bitter Lessons From The Past, His Is Also One Who Is Permanently Disappointed In The Future.
Fear
Past
Lessons
As We Grow Older, We Should Learn That These Are Two Quite Different Things. Character Is Something You Forge For Yourself; Temperament Is Something You Are Born With And Can Only Slightly Modify. Some People Have Easy Temperaments And Weak Characters; Others Have Difficult Temperaments And Strong Characters. We Are All Prone To Confuse The Two In Assessing People We Associate With. Those With Easy Temperaments And Weak Characters Are More Likable Than Admirable; Those With Difficult Temperaments And Strong Characters Are More Admirable Than Likable.
Strong
Character
Two
A Winner Rebukes And Forgives; A Loser Is Too Timid To Rebuke And Too Petty To Forgive.
Forgiveness
Forgiving
Loser
The Art Of Living Consists In Knowing Which Impulses To Obey And Which Must Be Made To Obey.
Art
Knowing
Made
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.
Love
Inspirational
Running
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.
Anniversary
Marriage
Congratulations
Many A Secret That Cannot Be Pried Out By Curiosity Can Be Drawn Out By Indifference.
Curiosity
Secret
Indifference
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.
Education
Dark
Mirrors
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.
Smart
Men
Lazy
Gourmet: Usually Little More Than A Glutton Festooned With Credit Cards.
Food
Credit
Littles
The World Has Always Been Betrayed By Decent Men With Bad Ideals.
Men
World
Betrayed
A Winner Knows How Much He Still Has To Learn, Even When He Is Considered An Expert By Others; A Loser Wants To Be Considered An Expert By Others Before He Has Learned Enough To Know How Little He Knows.
Growth
Experts
Want
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.
Running
Art
Long
Life Is, If Anything, The Art Of Combination. Of Discrimination. Of Freely Picking One's Own Personal Pattern Out Of A Hundred Choices. Not Letting It Be Picked For You—either By The Establishment, Or By The Rebels. Conformity Of Hip Is No Better Than Conformity Of Square.
Art
Squares
Choices
Happiness Is A Direction, Not A Place.
Happiness
Happy
Being Happy
A 'penchant For Telling The Truth' Can Cripple A Candidates Chances Faster Than Being Caught In Flagrante Delicto With The Governor's Wife.
Wife
Chance
Telling The Truth
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.
Children
Father
Team
The Commonest Fallacy Among Women Is That Simply Having Children Makes Them A Mother - Which Is As Absurd As Believing That Having A Piano Makes One A Musician.
Mother
Children
Believe
Ignorance Per Se Is Not Nearly As Dangerous As Ignorance Of Ignorance.
Ignorance
Dangerous
The Greatest Enemy Of Progress Is Not Stagnation, But False Progress.
Enemy Of Progress
Enemy
Progress
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.
Helping Others
People
Faults
Never Take The Advice Of Someone Who Has Not Had Your Kind Of Trouble.
Advice
Kind
Trouble
The Whole Purpose Of Education Is To Turn Mirrors Into Windows.
Graduation
Education
Wall
The Most Important Thing In An Argument, Next To Being Right, Is To Leave An Escape Hatch For Your Opponent, So That He Can Gracefully Swing Over To Your Side Without Too Much Apparent Loss Of Face.
Appreciation
Loss
Swings
The Primary Purpose Of A Liberal Education Is To Make One's Mind A Pleasant Place In Which To Spend One's Leisure.
Education
College
Mind
Every Morning I Take Out My Bankbook, Stare At It, Shudder - And Turn Quickly To My Typewriter.
Morning
Typewriters
Staring
It May Be True That The Weak Will Always Be Driven To The Wall; But It Is The Task Of A Just Society To See That The Wall Is Climbable.
Wall
Weak Will
Justice
Norbert Blei Is A Writer The Way People Used To Be Troubadours And Minstrels, Celebrating What He Has Seen And Heart And Felt In A Deceptively Simple Style Reminiscent Of The Early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, He Is A Lover, And His Affection Invests His Writing With A Singular Charm.
Writing
Heart
Simple
Ninety Per Cent 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 - So How Can We Know Anyone Else?
Real
Knowing
People
Isolation Always Perverts; When A Man Lives Only Among His Own Sort, He Soon Begins To Believe That His Sort Are The Best Sort. This Attitude Breeds Both The Arrogance Of The Conservative And The Bitterness Of The Radical.
Attitude
Believe
Men
Why Do Most Americans Look Up To Education And Down Upon Educated People?
People
Looks
Look Up
Perseverance Is The Most Overrated Of Traits, If It Is Unaccompanied By Talent; Beating Your Head Against A Wall Is More Likely To Produce A Concussion In The Head Than A Hole In The Wall.
Perseverance
Wall
Talent
There Are Always Too Many Democratic Congressmen, Too Many Republican Congressmen, And Never Enough U.s. Congressmen.
Voting
Democracy
Republican
A Loser Says That's The Way It's Always Been Done. A Winner Says There Ought To Be A Better Way.
Done
Way
Loser
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.
Teaching
Fire
Inspire
Being Yourself Is Not Remaining What You Were, Or Being Satisfied With What You Are. It Is The Point Of Departure And Far From The Goal.
Being Yourself
Departure
Where You Are
We Must Become Masters Of Our Own Actions And Attitudes. To Let Another Person Determine Whether We Will Be Rude Or Gracious, Elated Or Depressed Is To Give Control Of Ourselves. The Only True Possession Is Self Possession.
Attitude
Self
Giving
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.
Men
Cynical
May
The Severest Test Of Character Is Not So Much The Ability To Keep A Secret As It Is, When The Secret Is Finally Out, To Refrain From Disclosing That You Knew It All Along.
Character
Secret
Tests
If You Cannot Endure To Be Thought In The Wrong, You Will Begin To Do Terrible Things To Make The Wrong Appear Right.
Acceptance
Endure
Terrible
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.
Believe
Boys
Parent
Real Loneliness Consists Not In Being Alone, But In Being With The Wrong Person, In The Suffocating Darkness Of A Room In Which No Deep Communication Is Possible.
Real
Loneliness
Communication
When We Have "second Thoughts" About Something, Our First Thoughts Don't Seem Like Thoughts At All - Just Feelings.
Justice
Feelings
Firsts
Men Make Counterfeit Money; In Many More Cases, Money Makes Counterfeit Men.
Money
Men
Cases
Intolerance Is The Most Socially Acceptable Form Of Egotism, For It Permits Us To Assume Superiority Without Personal Boasting.
Acceptance
Tolerance
Assuming
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.
Tunnels
Light
Next
The Difference Between Faith And Superstition Is That The First Uses Reason To Go As Far As It Can, And Then Makes The Jump; The Second Shuns Reason Entirely — Which Is Why Superstition Is Not The Ally, But The Enemy, Of True Religion.
Differences
Enemy
Allies
If The Devil Could Be Persuaded To Write A Bible, He Would Title It, "you Only Live Once."
Bible
Writing
Devil
This Is A Lesson Mankind Has Not Yet Learned. We Identify, And Stratify, And Treat Persons Largely On The Basis Of Their Accidental (physical) Characteristics, Which Have No Deeper Meaning.
Lessons
Characteristics
Treats
Just About The Only Interruption We Don't Object To Is Applause.
Appreciation
Applause
Interruptions
Nice Things Are Done For Our Own Sake, Not For The Sake Of Others. The Pleasure Must Reside In The Performance, Not In The Applause. Good Deeds Are, In A Deeper Psychological Way, A Favor To Oneself. If This Is Not Grasped, Then Our Whole Sense Of Personal Relationships Becomes Warped.
Nice
Done
Deeds
The Beauty Of 'spacing' Children Many Years Apart Lies In The Fact That Parents Have Time To Learn The Mistakes That Were Made With The Older Ones - Which Permits Them To Make Exactly The Opposite Mistakes With The Younger Ones.
Children
Mistake
Lying
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