Popular quotes about Selfish! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 101
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.
E. O. WilsonThere's a wonderful support network developing worldwide of people who understand what this big calling is, the calling of love. People often ask me, "Is it selfish to want to experience more love? Aren't you just focusing on yourself?" and my answer is that it's the least selfish thing you can do. When you start living more and more in higher states of love, it affects everyone around you and it's the biggest way you can contribute to this planet.
Marci ShimoffWriting is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.
Rod SerlingPeople who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.
Richard DawkinsWord it as softly as you please, the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of the dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear him split the universe with is war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish, is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.
Mark TwainIt's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
Jonathan Safran FoerEven without love, I can live fine alone. It's not like I've always had what I wanted. In my life not even once... I was never selfish nor full of greed. The things I want to do, the things I want, the things I wish for... have I ever even had any of those, for at least once in my whole life? I can live fine without love. I will find a way to survive. Dying is hell. Why is living supposed to be hell?
Ma-RooChristianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.
Richard RohrIt's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.
Saul BellowI feel so selfish, because I want the best of both worlds. I want to keep the image I've worked so hard to create.
Simone ElkelesI genuinely believed no one would want to marry me. I am difficult to live with. I'm selfish, quite weird and I need time on my own to think - and then I work all night long. That is difficult for someone to deal with. And it would drive me mad - I could never be my own girlfriend!
Simon CowellI don't think there's such a thing as a selfish prayer. Prayer puts you in communication so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Iyanla VanzantWhat the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
Florence NightingaleBefore my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.
Rick AllenYou instantly become less selfish. You can't be the biggest person in the world anymore-they are. [Motherhood] really grounds you.
Keri RussellWhere art and business intersect is a challenging hurdle for a lot of people, reconciling the fact that not everyone is going to make it in the same way. Yeah, you have to be a little selfish, probably.
Mike BirbigliaI am in love with girls that are bad and naughty and badass, and a little selfish, but I like to watch from a respectful distance!
Dreama WalkerIf I had an author superpower, I would like to have the ability to stop time for everyone else. I feel like I have to disappear into myself to write books. I go away, into my head, for hours and weeks at a time, and I hate that I miss everything. It's pretty selfish to want to pause other people, isn't it?
Rainbow RowellI've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know.
Ray BradburyWe are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.
Mortimer AdlerHow selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
Adam SmithIf we are to say no to covetousness, we must learn to say yes to contentment. This involves learning to be content with what we have (Hebrews 13:5). Much of our discontentment may be traced to expectations that are essentially selfish and more often than not completely unrealistic.
Alistair BeggWhen you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.
Mike BirbigliaNot that I say,"Oh,I'm not going to associate with certain people.," but I have my world,and I only want to be around people who I feel stimulated by. I have to be honest I do have a new quest: I want to meet more vegetarians,people who are more like minded. There's something real neat about that feeling. It makes you feel so settled to know there's somebody else sitting right there,being so passionate about what I'm passionate about. I don't want to be around selfish people. I try to keep myself surrounded by deep people who will move me.
Alicia SilverstoneGiven the reality of unintended parenthood and parental unhappiness, one would think that women and men who make the decision not to have children - who are deliberate and thoughtful about the choice to bring another person into the world - would be seen as less selfish than those who unthinkingly have children. Yet the stigma remains.
Jessica ValentiBaseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.
Jackie RobinsonI've learned a lot just being around people who grew up so differently from me, which is cool. It teaches you how to be a lot more tolerant. The bigger your world is, the more tolerant and accepting you become, because you have friends from all walks of life. You learn to be a little bit less selfish.
Michael CheI have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
Christopher HitchensHaving been created in the image and likeness of God, unlike trees or flowers or fire or the moon, we are most fully human when we love, forgive and work toward peace. To be violent, vengeful or selfish is to be un-human!
Daniel HoranIf efforts to do social work are couched in selfish motives, then they will die a premature death. Why would my efforts get politicised? I have values I inherited from my father. He helped many. Anyone, even a postman knocking on our door would get a glass of water and some sweets.
Sachin TendulkarThink what a contribution selfish people of great talent could have made if their commitments had been made to Jesus Christ instead of to themselves! We will do better in every aspect of our lives if we commit to a God in whose life we see miracles, power over disease and death.
Vaughn J FeatherstoneWe've been trained since kindergarten: Be nice, be kind, share, put on a smile. So we're conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts, and that's the right thing for society.
Bryan CranstonTo be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.
Chris EvertIndividuals motivated by self-interest, self-indulgence, and a false sense of self-sufficiency pursue selfish ambition for the purpose of self-glorification.
C. J. MahaneySelfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Erich FrommIt is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWriting is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.
Monica DickensAtheists anger doesn't prove that we're selfish, or joyless, or miserable. It shows that we have compassion, and a sense of justice. We're angry because we see terrible harm all around us, and we feel desperately motivated to stop it.
Greta ChristinaAll writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.
George OrwellRaw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.
Pablo NerudaI do think that it is one of the eternal questions about art, though - is all art intrinsically selfish?
Liza CampbellSo plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.
Abraham Lincoln