Thoughts At Large

A few quotations courtesy of Sydney J. Harris...

If it is wrong to take a life in the womb, why is taking a life almost always justified later on the battlefield? Does the state have a claim superior to the mother's?

Fundamentalists who take the Bible literally seem to have no idea that this attitude is precisely what Jesus was railing against in his attacks upon the Pharisees of his time.

It is the very core of the human predicament that the most important things in life we need to learn are precisely those things that cannot be taught.

An idealist believes that the short run doesn't count; a cynic believes that the long run doesn't matter; a realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. (Historically speaking, Rabbi Jesus was the supreme realist.)

Economists need to be reminded regularly that the idea of growth for its own sake is precisely the philosophy of the cancer cell.

If we could find a way of relieving boredom for the human race, it would reduce mischief and crime far more than a hundred schemes to promote morality and punish evil-doing.

It's hard to know which are the greater number, those who disdain to read the Bible and thus miss a whole dimension of profundity, or those who read it assiduously and distort, simplify, or vulgarize its symbolism.

Religions tend to be hostile and divisive among themselves, while the sciences are necessarily allies — indicating there may be more of a religious core of unity in scientific investigation of the truth than in the religious exhortation of piety.