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Live your life as you see fit. That's not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.
Anthony de MelloI don't know if it's ever OK for someone to be selfish. Perhaps there's a time and place to be self-centered, but I think selfish never wins the race.
Jessica CapshawLove is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Ayn RandEverybody makes such a big deal today about team play because there's such a scarcity of it. Greed is a reason. You have to understand the influence of greed. A player has to be selfish in the pursuit of the development of his skills, but he cannot be selfish when it comes time to blend them in with what's good for his team.
Pete CarrilI pass through many Me's in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.
David MitchellPeople 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 DawkinsModern infidelity is different than traditional infidelity and sits on top of the romantic ideal that you find "the one" and that if you have everything that you need at home, you have no reason to go looking elsewhere. And if you have an affair, it's a symptom of a flawed relationship. If you don't apply the deficiency model to the relationship, then you apply it to the person. The person who strays is selfish, immature, addicted suffers from insecure attachment. And the person who doesn't stray is the committed partner: mature, stable, and non-selfish.
Esther PerelMaybe I'm being selfish, but I choose you." He leaned over, lips brushing mine as he whispered, "I always choose you.
Kelley ArmstrongIt'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 BellowScientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way.
Richard DawkinsYou should sub a player out when you see a player not going full-speed or playing selfish basketball.
Dean SmithI had to give him props, but how annoying of him to be a hero when I was trying so hard to dislike him. It was downright selfish.
James PattersonAll sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.
Ralph Waldo EmersonTo say grace, knowing that people on this globe are starving, indicates a highly selfish acquiescence in the arrogantly supposed favoritism of the almighty. A really decent god-believer, far from giving thanks for the food and good health and fortune enjoyed by himself and his family and close friends, would surely curse God for his neglect of the hungry, the sick and the tormented, throughout the world.
Barbara SmokerWhat 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 NightingaleI'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.
Henry MillerYour father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vainโMaddy glanced at Tallyโand selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.
Scott WesterfeldThe world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.
Woodrow WilsonA system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.
W. Edwards DemingBut deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves - rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.
Caitlin MoranMy occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.
Tom CourtenayWe 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 AdlerI'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!
B. F. SkinnerOrdinary 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.
Sri Yukteswar GiriDo not be selfish and feel new people will take more of the teacher's attention and you won't get it. That's nonsense. With that attitude, you won't get it. The teacher sees that attitude and will have very little to do with you.
Frederick LenzTruthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.
Stephen ColbertPoets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible โIโโฆ. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love โ selfish, shitty love โ 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.
Julian BarnesI was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.
Barbra StreisandIf 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.
Joshua HarrisWhen I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.
Chris EvertThere's little things like that, that we paid a lot of attention to. We don't always know how to bond together to get help or to do something, and our attempts are often awkward, selfish or weird. We talked a lot about how to open things up.
Remi AubuchonIt's funny. I'm attracted to things that don't have any impact on life. People say I've done a great thing for women. I don't think I have. People say I've given people courage. That makes me feel good, but I don't see how I do that. I think my running is a selfish thing. But it provides the challenge that allows me to feel good about myself. How can I expect to do well in other activities if I don't feel good about myself?
Joan BenoitTo see lonely, selfish, empty individuals transformed slowly but surely into warm, loving, wholesome, and happy people is to become aware of why Paul describes Christ as 'unsearchable riches'.
Ray StedmanPeople are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway.
Mother TeresaIf you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities.
Ann RichardsMaybe coming clean is the ultimate selfish act. A way to absolve yourself by hurting someone who doesn't deserve to be hurt.
Cindy ChupackLove isn't one-sided and selfish.It is full and generous and life-altering in the best of ways.Love does not destroy, Gabriel.It creates.
Sarah MacLean...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons. - Mr. Penderwick
Jeanne BirdsallIn recent years, many seem to have spent their lives protesting. Perhaps they have felt to do this because they have felt repressed or wished to bring about change or have acted out of selfish reasons, thinking that if they tore the house down they might end up with a shingle.
James E. FaustBusiness demands faith, compels earnestness, requires courage, is honestly selfish, is penalized for mistakes, and is the essence of life.
William FeatherChristians and Jews go after those who have access to raw materials but who prevent access to them. Oil is the best example. The US and its allies are constantly intervening in countries where they don't belong only to defend their prosperity. We aren't fighting because we are greedy and selfish, rather we are fighting for values and morals.
Abdul Sattar Abu Risha