Quotes About Selfishness

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.

Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity.

Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness; and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.

Stubborn selfishness leads otherwise good people to fight over herds, patches of sand, and strippings of milk. All this results from what the Lord calls coveting "the drop," while neglecting the "more weighty matters." (D&C 117:8) Myopic selfishness magnifies a mess of pottage and makes thirty pieces of silver look like a treasure trove. In our intense acquisitiveness, we forget Him who once said, "What is property unto me?"

Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

The 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.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals.

Faced with today's problems and disappointments , many people will try to escape from their responsibility. Escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape.

Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.’… ‘Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.’… ‘Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.’… ‘Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.’… ‘And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.

Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past—the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

What i’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!

The most difficult thing for us seems to be to give of ourselves, to do away with selfishness. If we really love someone, nothing is too difficult for us to do for that individual. There is no real happiness in having or getting unless we are doing it for the purpose of giving it to others. Half the world seems to be following the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness-many think it consists of having and getting and being served, when really happiness is found in serving others.

Having kids is a full-time job. And I don't know any woman who isn't constantly fighting between the exquisite selfishness required to be an artist and this exquisite selflessness that's required to be a parent.

The capacity for loving strangers, whether one thinks of them as fictional beings or stars one will never meet, is a profound reflection on the new consciousness whereby every individual leads his or life while aware of all the billions of other people on Earth. Perhaps it is a fantasy or a fallacy that we can feel for so many strangers. Perhaps it is a mask for selfishness. But no matter the modern stress on special effects, there isn't a sight in movies as momentous as shots of a face as its mind is being changed. And only movies have allowed that.

If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.

Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?

Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a "wicked and slothful servant." For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

Empty 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.

Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or the other or both parties to a marriage contract. Someone is thinking of self comforts, conveniences, freedoms, luxuries, or ease. Sometimes the ceaseless pin pricking of an unhappy, discontented, and selfish spouse can finally add up to serious physical violence. Sometimes people are goaded to the point where they erringly feel justified in doing the things that are so wrong. Nothing of course justifies sin.

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

The highest form of selfishness is that of the man who is content to go to heaven alone.

What's wrong with selfishness and egotism? We live to die smiling, don't we?

He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.

A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

Through the practice of devotion to God, I was coming to learn that preserving loving relations in this world required much forgiveness, tolerance, patience, gratitude, and humility. An essential virtue of humility is to accept others for what they are, despite differences. I contemplated again how the tendency to judge others is often a symptom of insecurity, immaturity, or selfishness, and I yearned to rise above it. Everyone is a child of God. God loves all of His children. If I wish to love God, I must learn to love those whom He loves.

How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness.

We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own.

I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodeness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know. My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it.

One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

Every time we give in to selfishness and say “No” to God, we spoil his loving plan for us.

Mr Thornton would rather have heard that she was suffering the natural sorrow. In the first place, there was selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea that his great love might come in to comfort and console her; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure which comes stinging through a mother's heart, when her drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon her for everything.

Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.

Right-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.

Some, 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

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

But 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. “It 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.'

Even 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.

I didn't want to believe that killing was deep inside of me. I didn't want to think about the part of me that took a dark joy in gathering all the power it could and using it as I saw fit, everything else be damned. There was power to be had in hatred, too, in anger and in lust, in selfishness and in pride. And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos.

Let 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.

The reason why wicked men and devils hate God is, because they see Him in relation to themselves. Their hearts rise up in rebellion, because they see Him opposed to their selfishness.

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

We are beset by problems and if we look for their source, we find they arise because of our selfishness, because we tend to pursue our own interests at the expense of others. Our various religious traditions exist to help us reduce these problems. They all teach ways to overcome suffering through cultivating love and compassion, tolerance, patience and contentment.

Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war.