The New Year Quote by Arthur Hays Sulzberger

Sulzberger’s line reads like a politely sharpened editorial, the kind that lands with a smile and leaves a bruise. The setup is a neat piece of arithmetic-as-moralism: eleven months and “maybe about twenty days” spent scanning other people for defects, then a narrow, almost ceremonial window when the spotlight swings back onto us. That “maybe” is doing a lot of work. It signals self-awareness about human evasiveness even while pretending to measure it precisely. He’s winking at the way we rationalize our judgmental habits as if they’re scheduled and controlled.

The intent isn’t just to endorse New Year’s resolutions; it’s to shame the reader gently into noticing the asymmetry of attention. Our default mode, he implies, is critique outward, not introspection inward. Coming from a publisher - and from the man who led The New York Times through decades when public life was increasingly mediated by headlines - the subtext carries extra bite. Newspapers train the eye on public shortcomings for a living. Sulzberger is, in a sense, indicting his own industry’s gravitational pull toward other people’s failures, while also defending a civic ideal: that periodic self-scrutiny is not self-indulgence but maintenance.

“It is a good habit” lands as understated prescription. No fireworks, no redemption narrative. Just the suggestion that accountability can be ritualized - and that a culture that monetizes judgment might still carve out a brief annual pause to audit the self.