We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
Interpretation
We judge others harshly while expecting them to be kind to us.
This quote by Sydney J. Harris reflects the inherent human tendency to hold others to very high standards of accountability and justice, while simultaneously desiring understanding, forgiveness, and compassion for ourselves. It points out the hypocrisy in human relationships where we easily criticize and evaluate others but wish to escape the same scrutiny, highlighting the complexity of human judgment and empathy.
In practice
In a discussion about fairness in society, this quote can serve to remind individuals to reflect on their own biases.
A person is either himself or not himself; is either rooted in his existence or is a fabrication; has either found his humanhood or is still playing with masks and roles and status symbols. And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.
At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teachβit is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.
...the person who surrenders absolutely to God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe. From this safe hiding-place he can see the devil , but the devil cannot see him.
It's ironic that in our culture everyone's biggest complaint is about not having enough time; yet nothing terrifies us more than the thought of eternity.
Where is the soul? . . . I refuse to believe anything of that kind without proof. The idea that, as soon as a man's breath leaves his body, the soul flops out like a chicken's head and flies off into space to find a lodgment where there [are] harps and haloes. Too much for me.
I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.
How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage for that matter.
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