Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Most people when they come after you for advice come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

Get advice, then make your own decision.

I never had a man come to me for advice yet, but what I soon discovered that he thought more of his own opinion than he did of mine.

People are always willing to follow advice when it accords with their own wishes.

Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

You are the person who has to decide. Whether you'll do it or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up your mind. Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are.

The best advice is essentially that thing in the back of your mind that you really aren't sure of, and when you start to hear other people bring up the same concerns, you say, "Okay, let's address that."

I lay very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty; but, after all, he must determine his course of action, for himself.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.

You have the RIGHT to change your mind

They keep telling me don't save you. If I ignore all that advice and something isn't right then who will I complain to?

What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me! But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.

People who are wrong during particularly important moments inevitably spend the rest of their lives trying to explain how their wrongness was paradoxically correct, or-at the very least-why their wrongness "felt right at the time," which is very, very different from being authentically correct.

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.

I don't turn to anyone for advice. I do what I want.

You can seek advice, learn about the options and make choices that are right for you. Knowledge is power.

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

I think people do have their own minds.

But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.