What I Wish I Had Known at Eighteen.

Sydney Harris, U.S.A.


  • That every day marks a fork in the road, in some little way; and that by the time the big fork comes along we have already made so many little decisions that we have no real choice left at the crucial turning.
  • That it is easier to feel than to think, and easier to feel hate than to feel love, and easier to act on hate than to act on love--and we must resist the easier path every inch of the way every day of our lives.
  • That we should be firmly resistant toward ideas we believe to be wrong, but immensely tolerant toward people who hold such ideas, never for a moment confusing the person with the idea, which is the besetting sin of bigotry in all its manifold forms.
  • That every time we use a person for our own purpose, ignoring their needs, we diminish ourselves  more than we diminish them, for theirs is a wound that could heal, while ours is an amputation that cannot grow back.
  • That our differences are superficial, and our similarities are profound; and those who are afraid to acknowledge the similarities are forced to live--and die--by the differences.
  • That most of what we call "love" is a form of vanity, and that the genuine thing (far from being as common as grass) is as rare as holiness, or courage, or wisdom, which have a million counterfeits for every one real manifestation.
  • That we learn only what becomes part of us; abstract knowledge is not only useless but dangerous until we have assimilated it to the core of our personality.
  • That human society is confined in a lifeboat, not dispersed on an ocean liner; and unless each one is permitted the same rights, they will not assume the same responsibilities, and the lifeboat has no chance to survive.
  • That "education" is not a formal discipline, but an attitude, an approach, an appetite, an ongoing process that must begin in the home atmosphere if it is to be successfully transmitted to the outer world.
  • That the two greatest threats to the security of civilization come from the "absolutists" who think they know precisely what is right and wrong, and from the "relativists" who insist there is no right and wrong--for each doctrine, pushed to its ultimate, leads to death by suffocation or by fragmentation.

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