A Quote by Sydney J. Harris

Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true. — © Sydney J. Harris
Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, viz, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.
The Premier League is one of the top leagues in the world and I'm a guy that likes to challenge myself, so just to be able to practice against those types of players and play against them every weekend is a dream come true.
There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
I think I am against stereotype. Generally, Asian guys are more quiet - they study and have a good work ethic. Generally, I have none of those things.
Generally, I am just myself, a crazy John Belushi type. But I'm not comparing myself to him. I think I am against stereotype. Generally Asian guys are more quiet - they study and have a good work ethic. Generally, I have none of those things.
It is imperative for many branches of fundamentalist christianity to constantly feel conspired against...so they cite humanist manifestos and theosophical societies and concoct these vast and dark organizations that exist nowhere but in the minds of those who conceive these theories.
I don't think I have rebelled against Latina culture. I have rebelled against those who try to make me warm tortillas for my brothers when they can warm them for themselves, I have rebelled against a patriarchal religion. I rebel against small mindedness in all ways and in every situation but those things are not an intrinsic part of Latina culture and I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who tries to make me feel like I'm less Xicana for not embracing the small-mindedness.
Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness.
... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger. True, we are too timid and powerless to take on all the guards of all the political prisons in the world; but in offering our solidarity to one prisoner we denounce all the tormentors. True, we are powerless against death; but as long as we help one man, one woman, one child live one hour longer in safety and dignity, we affirm man's [woman's] right to live.
I think there is something exhilarating in flying amongst clouds, and always get a feeling of wanting to pit my aeroplane against them, charge at them, climb over them to show them you have them beat, circle round them, and generally play with them; but clouds can on occasion hold their own against the aviator, and many a pilot has found himself emerging from a cloud not on a level keel.
What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world. They make common cause with the world against themselves, and the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of commodities, their own conversion into appendages of machinery, is for them a mirage of closeness.
I can't imagine anyone who doesn't think the world is safer without a tyrant who murdered his own people, used weapons of mass destruction against them and flouted the world for so many years.
Imagine craving absolutely nothing from the world. Imagine cutting the invisible strings that so painfully bind us: what would that be like? Imagine the freedoms that come from the ability to enjoy things without having to acquire them, own them, possess them. Try to envision a relationship based on acceptance and genuine care rather than expectation. Imagine feeling completely satisfied and content with your life just as it is. Who wouldn't want this? This is the enjoyment of non-attachment.
A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind.
Imagine the one god himself has reversed his clock and reversed your regrets. Imagine knowing the bone-deep truth that whatever impossibility would make you truly happy has been granted. Imagine knowing you can once again hold your lost lover or your newborn child. Imagine what you feel during those first seconds of knowing. Now, imagine those first seconds last for days on end. .... Like I said, I'm a chemist. It's all coming back to me.p62
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