“An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.”

— Sydney J. Harris

Reader’s Digest (May 1979)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that…" by Sydney J. Harris?

Sydney J. Harris 44

American journalist 1917–1986

Related quotes

“In this age, which believes that there is a short-cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way, in the long run, is the easiest.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

The Books in My Life (1952) Preface (2nd edition. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1969, p. 12)

“[Shorter variant:] In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Quoted and attributed to Graham in Warren Buffett's 1993 letter to investors. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1993.html
The statement is not found in any of Graham's publications or lecture transcripts, and when asked, Buffett could not provide a reference. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=77840
Disputed

“In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States

“Modern macroeconomics flourished in its pursuit of the secrets of long-run economic growth, but it neglected short-run economic problems. In the long run, prices are flexible, and the growth of the economy is determined by the growth in the ability to supply goods and services. But in the short run prices are not flexible. Growth can be held back because prices are too high and, as a result, demand is too low. Keynes made his name by analyzing short-run problems caused by the stickiness or even rigidity of some important prices. But these Keynesian ideas were abandoned by modern macroeconomics.”

Peter Temin (1937) American economist

Why Keynes is Important Today (2014)

“As long as I am running this Government I will run the Government as I see fit…as I believe in, based on my philosophy.”

Brian Cowen (1960) Irish politician

He's taken the blows and now Brian's doing it . .His Way, Irish Independent, 28 January 2009, 2010-06-12 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/hes-taken-the-blows-and-now-brians-doing-it----his-way-1616861.html,
2009

“There is, in short, no 'spatial fix' that can contain the contradictions of capitalism in the long run.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 442

“In the short-run, the market is a voting machine - reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability - but in the long-run, the market is a weighing machine.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Disputed

“The terrorists in Iraq believe their attacks on innocent people will weaken our resolve. They believe we will run from a challenge. They are mistaken. Americans are not the running kind.”

Paul Wolfowitz (1943) American politician, diplomat, and technocrat

Yahoo News article October 10, 2003 http://in.news.yahoo.com/031010/137/28diu.html This statement is identical to one made by President George W. Bush on October 9, 2003 and is likely to have been a mis-reporting of Wolfowitz quoting Bush's statement.
Misattributed

“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), Ch. 3, p. 80
Context: But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

“Maybe it's because I've never been in politics, but I don't believe that America is run by politicians in Washington. I believe it's run by people like us, in places like this.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

True Values Tour (January 2004)

“An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sydney J. Harris 44

Related quotes

Related topics