Quotes About Selfish

I've always been antagonistic to any naïve application of the selfish gene theory to politics. Some people have attempted to suggest that it means we are selfish or we should be selfish.

Live your life as you see fit. That's not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.

Is this what you have in mind,' I asked the Dalai Lama, 'when you say in teachings that the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the world are the most selfish beings of all, that by cultivating altruism they actually achieve ultimate happiness for themselves?' Yes. That's wise selfish,' he replied. 'Helping others not means we do this at our own expense. Not like this. Buddhas and bodhisattvas, these people very wise. All their lives they only want one thing: to achieve ultimate happiness. How to do this? By cultivating compassion, by cultivating altruism.

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

It is of course evident that everything in one's religious life depends upon the sort of God one worships. The character of the worshiper must necessarily be molded by the character of the object worshipped. If it is a cruel and revengeful God, or a selfish and unjust God, the worshiper will be cruel, and revengeful, and selfish, and unjust, also. If it is a loving, tender, forgiving, unselfish God, the worshiper will be loving, and tender, and forgiving, and unselfish, as well.

...Good leaders wait to be called and they give up their power when they are no longer needed. Selfish men and fools put themselves first and keep their power until someone throws them out. It is no good to have a way where selfish men and fools fight with each other to be leaders, while the good ones watch.

Actors - we're selfish, but we can't think about the work in that kind of selfish manner. I think that you have to step away from yourself, if you're going to do it. Otherwise don't do it; otherwise why do it?

You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering-no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune.

I don't want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments. That's no contribution to society. [Tennis] was purely selfish; that was for me.

It is impossible to be both selfish and happy.

I think love is often a bit selfish, even before we had consumerism. That's not new. A consumer society gives you the illusion of having massive amounts of choice and saddles you with the freedom of being able to dabble in that choice. And at the same time, you are left with the tyranny of self-doubt and uncertainty about whether you made the right choice.

Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.

You're real selfish and everything is focused on you and how you feel until you realize there is something missing and that's your relationship with Jesus Christ.

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.

You should sub a player out when you see a player not going full-speed or playing selfish basketball.

Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.

I 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!

Marriage is just an elaborate game that allows two selfish people to periodically feel that they're not.

As an athlete you're taught to be selfish. When I'm training, it's usually all about me.

The only society that works today is also one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually, to help each other on the basis of each other's equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.

If we see the body we live in as a temple used to engage in beautiful activities in the service of God's children, then we recognize it as spiritual. But if we use our body for more selfish purposes, then we're only experiencing its material conception.

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

The American goes to Paris, always has, and comes back and tells his neighbor, always does, how exorbitant and inhospitable it is, how rapacious and selfish and unaccommodating and unresponsive it is, how dirty and noisy it is-and the next summer his neighbor goes to Paris.

I was given such a great gift. It's a miracle that never stops amazing me and reminding me to give thanks, every day. Having a wife and daughter gives me a lot more purpose. I was much more selfish before, but now I think about what kind of role model I'll be. I just want to be a better man.

You're too damn selfish!

There is a fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, which is founded in love. There is also a slavish fear, which is a mere dread of evil, and is purely selfish.

Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.

Shall an invention be patented or donated to the public freely? I have known some well-meaning scientific men ... to look askance at the patenting of inventions, as if it were a rather selfish and ungracious act, essentially unworthy. The answer is very simple. Publish an invention freely, and it will almost surely die from lack of interest in its development. It will not be developed and the world will not be benefited. Patent it, and if valuable, it will be taken up and developed into a business.

Never trust a sentimentalist. They are all alike, pretenders to virtue, at heart selfish frauds and sensualists.

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

If you're not ready to consider marriage or you're not truly interested in marrying a specific person, it's selfish and potentially harmful to encourage that person to need you or ask him or her to gratify you emotionally or physically.

I 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.

It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.

Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.

As you get older you try to do things that please you more. You get a little more selfish. You start thinking I want to do things where I enjoy myself.

My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

I think in the old music, everything was so competitive. It was all about - very selfish in a lot of ways. The label sort of capitalized on that desperation and that competition. In the new music landscape, with is the democratization of the internet and music in general, I think it can be a lot more collaborative. People, instead of competing, they can actually support each other, in music.

When I was at Pixar, I was in my hole. I was an animator, I had my shots and I was like, "Yeah, I've gotta make this perfect!" It's a very selfish thing.

My big problem with corporate structure is this bizarre sense of loyalty you're supposed to feel -- towards what is basically a virus. It grows or dies, like any virus. And you use it for your own selfish ends." - source

Selfish is caring for ourselves at others' expense ... Self-care is taking care of ourselves so that we can be there for others.

A selfish person says, hey, me and my four at home and no more and whatever happens to you is OK. But it can't be that way. It cannot be that way.

Business demands faith, compels earnestness, requires courage, is honestly selfish, is penalized for mistakes, and is the essence of life.

I think perfect love is any time you love unconditionally, without selfish intent, without concern for personal gain.

Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker.

At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts us to make roses stand before thorns. Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse— at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older, I to love and you to be loved, we have, no matter how, by our wills survived to keep the jeweled prize always at our finger tips. We will it so and so it is past all accident.

You seem cynical because you're always talking about that selfish behavior that's dressed up as altruism. It doesn't mean there isn't altruism. It just means that it's harder to make jokes about altruism.

I'm sure Democrats are hoping that Donald Trump will make a move soon to rescind and repeal Obama's orders. And then Barack Obama will call the media and he'll go on TV and he'll immediately accuse Trump of poisoning the planet, not caring about poisoning the water and all this other stuff. I know how this stuff works, and more of you each and every day who listen here religiously know as well as I what Obama is setting up here. It is to portray Trump as some selfish heathen who only cares about his own profit.