Sydney J. Harris Quotes

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

The human heart tends toward tribalism before tolerance. We can go back to that world. It still lives in all of us. Fighting it is the challenge, particularly at a time when the most audacious thing you can do is show some grace.

I do not believe it is right to identify Islam with violence. This is not right or true.

For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

When people silo themselves by belief, only affiliating with like-minded media organizations and people, we lose the opportunity for genuine conversation, much less persuasion.

Terror outfits like ISIS don't believe in a plural society and diversity of faith, which reflects inherent beauty of human beings.

British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right, which is the antithesis of the values this country represents: decency, tolerance, respect.

You cannot appease fascism by meeting it in the middle; you cannot beat racism by indulging or excusing it.

There are no grounds for discrimination in Europe, regardless of whether on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, or religion. On the other hand, there is equally no place for radical thought and political Islam.

There is no place for any kind of extremism in society.

It's not just human nature to associate in tribes. It's deeper than that.

The separation of audience into tribes preferring to reinforce their own views with media of similar ideological stripe makes true debate impossible.

In the larger world, tribalism is an enormous problem, as it ever has been: both strength and idiocy borne from belonging.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State cannot tolerate diversity, which is why we must celebrate it.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.

I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

Whether you're the wedding cake baker or the gay couple or the Baptist preacher, radical Islam would kill you all if they could.

I explain how America hatred and Jew hatred are [INDEMIC] to Modern Liberalism and delve deeper into why it is the otherwise good and decent people will INVARIABLY side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.

The most active people in the country know different things, and because each one tends to hear mostly and deal mostly with people with whom they agree, they are reinforced not simply in the conviction that they are right, which is totally appropriate, but that they are the majority. So you have both sides, the Left and the Right, thinking that the majority of the country is really with them.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet.

We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say "common struggle" because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.

And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.