Quotes About Selfish

I wasn't good enough for abnegation," I say, "and I wanted to be free. So I chose Dauntless." "Why weren't you good enough?" "Because I was selfish." I say. "You were selfish? You aren't anymore?" "Of course I am. My mother said that everyone is selfish," I say, "but I became less selfish in Dauntless. I discovered there were people I would fight for. Die for, even.

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.

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?

It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish.

People 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.

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

Selfishness 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.

Now is the one time in my life I can be 100% selfish. I'm not married; I don't have kids; I can focus on my career.

It'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.

Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.

Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification.

Disease. Filth. Waste. Crime. Brutality. What’s there to like? (Solin) There’s brutality on Olympus. (Arik) True. But I hate humanity as much as I hate the gods. Both groups are selfish bastards bent on destroying everything around them. They were given a perfect world and rather than enjoy it, they’d rather destroy it and each other. Excuse me if I don’t look at them with love in my eyes but rather scorn in my heart. (Solin)

The darker side of the City tried to emphasize the selfish parts of me by encouraging my sense of entitlement and my desire for personal space. But God seemed to whisper that the alternative existed: to let Him grow humility and concern for others in a way I had never experienced, to live out His peace amid whirling chaos.

The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all.

A selfish person can still love someone else, can't they? Even when they've hurt them and let them down.

I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent, a selfish act.

It indicates a person who has not only good manners but who possesses a sense of balance, a sure mastery of himself, a moral discipline that permits him to subordinate voluntarily his own selfish interest to the wider interests of the society in which he lives. The gentleman, therefore is a cultural person in the noblest sense of the word, if by culture we mean not simply wealth of intellectual knowledge but also the ability to fulfil one's duty and understand one's fellow man by respecting / every principle, every opinion, every faith that is sincerely professed.

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.

If you tell people enough times that they are unhappy, incomplete, possibly insane and definitely selfish there is bound to come a grey morning when they wake up with the beginning of a nasty cold and wonder if they are lonely rather than simply “alone.”

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!

So often do you see collegians enter life with high resolve and lofty purpose and then watch them shrink and shrink to sordid, selfish, shrewd plodders, full of distrust and sneers.

Whenever I release a record, it's my record. It's not a selfish thought. I may work all year 'round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.

You're too damn 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.

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

Baseball, 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.

Let our lives be firmly rooted in Truth. Abstain from lies. In this dark age of materialism, adherence to truth is the greatest austerity. We might have to tell lies now and then to protect somebody or to sustain dharma, but we must be careful not to speak lies for our own selfish purposes.

As much as it's awful to learn about all the greedy and selfish decisions that some people make, I know there are many more people who have good intentions.

You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.

If you look at the people in Hollywood who are heavy partiers, they're selfish, self-centered and egotistical.

I know too much; I've seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile, to nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

They don’t think “I care,” “I hurt,” or “I have feelings.” It just seems like I’m always “wrong,” always “selfish,” always “self-centered” and everything else that’s negative and destructive.

History down through the centuries has proved again and again that there can be but one outcome to a struggle for selfish power against forces fighting to protect and advance human rights. Those genuinely serving humanity always ultimately emerge triumphant. It is under their standards that the [Western] allies choose to throw in their lot for humanity's defense.

In matters editorial, I am a believer in totalitarian despotism. Most writers are lazy, difficult, selfish, thoughtless, and unreliable.

i hate leaving places i love i was never at one place long. am i selfish?

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.

We'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.

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 people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.

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.

The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.

What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don’t worry about death, or about [anything for that matter]… We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, by that I mean the Creator.

Atheists 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.

Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay.

...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential.