Popular quotes about Selfishness! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Selfishness so often is the basis of money problems, which are a very serious and real factor affecting the stability of family life. Selfishness is at the root of adultery, the breaking of solemn and sacred covenants to satisfy selfish lust. Selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a cankering expression of greed. It destroys self-discipline. It obliterates loyalty. It tears up sacred covenants. It afflicts both men and women.
Gordon B. HinckleySelfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to.
Oscar WildeSelfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
William WilberforceSelfishness is the key quality that all successful people share. To be the best at what you do in any field, and to accomplish the goals you set for yourself, you have to be somewhat selfish.
Ja RuleFollowing Jesus means taking up one's own cross to accompany him on his path, an uncomfortable path that is not one of success or earthly glory, but which leads to true freedom, the freedom from selfishness and sin.
Pope FrancisThere questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist if you're in a gallery in New York and not an artist if you're doing it at home? Do you need legitimation to count? If you've been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that's what's been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art? I think those are questions that arise differently for women and for men.
Claire MessudThe root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.
Sam KeenIndividual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
E. O. Wilson... we performers are monsters. We are a totally different, far-out race of people. I totally and completely admit, with no qualmsat all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice.
Leontyne PriceHere is, in truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of true being.
PatanjaliEvery divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or both parties to a marriage contract.
Spencer W. KimballSelfishness is the biggest form of helplessness as it makes the person blind so much that he fails to search his true self for being always in the lurch.
AnujThe greatest comforts and lasting peace are obtained, when one eradicates selfishness from within.
Guru Gobind SinghHow much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.
Thomas Wentworth HigginsonIs it possible really to love other people? If Iโm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential reliefโI need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isnโt a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody elseโs needs that I canโt even feel directly? And yet if I canโt do this, Iโm damned to loneliness, which I definitely donโt want โฆ so Iโm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.
David Foster WallacePeople pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.
David MitchellPersonal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
Miguel Angel RuizOne reason that a truth and reconciliation process is needed for group selection is to return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwinโs solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled โRethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiologyโ: Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
David Sloan WilsonEmpty me of the selfishness inside, every vain ambition and the poison of my pride, and any foolish thing my heart holds to, Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.
Chris SlighWe live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned, are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes.
James F. CooperThe mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.
John DeweyYour conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
Richard BachIt is an act of extreme selfishness for a married couple to refuse to have children when they are able to do so.
Spencer W. KimballWould that our harsh judgments could be restrained, our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down, our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter without the slightest tinge of human' infirmity, the All-Merciful and the All-Just.
Arthur Penrhyn StanleyPeople's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.
Bob DylanCamera but no selfies, which represent selfishness and egotism. Social media? Again: not really me.
Maurice LevyThe hardest work you and I will ever do is to put off our selfishness. It is heavy lifting!
Neal A. MaxwellWe have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. (Despite) all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether... The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.
Ralph Waldo EmersonScientists have discovered that the small, brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy.
Natalie AngierThe soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRight-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired.
Hal CrowtherTo the end, I will remain a child of Europe, of worry and of shame. I have no message of hope to deliver. For the West, I do not feel hatred. At most I feel a great contempt. I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism and death. We have created a system in which it has simply become impossible to live, and what's more, we continue to export it.
Michel HouellebecqWhile science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love, and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought... There is recompense for suffering. A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. All will be well. I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.
David BerlinskiAs frost to the bud, and blight to the blossom, even such is self-interest to friendship; for confidence cannot dwell where selfishness is porter at the gate.
Martin Farquhar TupperSome, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, have a hard time loving anyone, even themselves, because of their selfishness. Love seeks to give rather than to get. Charity towards and compassion for others is a way to overcome too much self-love
James E. FaustBut all the great staining temptations, to selfishness, ambition, and other strong sins that violently affront the soul, appear first in the region of the mind, and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small and by reliance upon the word of the Spirit of Truth. โIt is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is as though He said, 'Learn to live in your will, not in your feelings.'
Amy CarmichaelEven through you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we our canoe, we share the same river of life. What befalls me befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this river of life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.
Oren LyonsLet us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.
John Amos ComeniusMany seniors understand that Social Security is social insurance as opposed to a program where we put money aside for our own retirement. But most elderly individuals think they're getting their money back. So it isn't selfishness as much as a misunderstanding.
Richard LammOurs has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.
Sherry TurkleThe effect of capitalism is to steer human selfishness so that, through the invisible hand of competition, the energies of the capitalist produce the abundance from which the whole society benefits.
Dinesh D'SouzaYou must learn to meditate and stop your thoughts. You must overcome all egotism and selfishness by serving others. You must cleanse your mind so that enlightenment will find a happy place to reside there.
Frederick LenzRegardless, heterosexual marriage is largely in trouble today because people see it as a selfish means of pleasing self, rather than a committed relationship in which the focus is on meeting the needs of the partner, that sense of selfishness and the redefinition of love as to something that is purely sentimental and emotional, has been destructive.
Mike HuckabeeFor the academic the rhetorical sense of superiority through the possession of knowledge is essential for facing the daily grind, turning again to the otherwise boring article, braving the students who, fresh as each class may be, will still ask the same questions year after year. Psychological survival is not achieved without effort, and the environment must be managed, knocked about with one's elbows until it takes a shape comfortable to one's sense of self. This is not selfishness, for in reshaping the environment the academic is also reinvigorating the educational process.
Robin Winks