Quotes About Selfishness

In Scouting you are combating the brooding of selfishness.

I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and His system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, and--most marvelous of all--went to break all bonds of body and soul, and to cast down every temporal and every spiritual tyranny.

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away.

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.

That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity.

... we performers are monsters. We are a totally different, far-out race of people. I totally and completely admit, with no qualmsat all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We've gone from bad economic doctrine. We've even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we're talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering upon the already miserable.

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

The fact is that sin is the most unmanly thing in God's world. You never were made for sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedience.

I have freedom. But freedom means total selfishness. It means nobody cares much what you do.

Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year. Always hold on to the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Be obedient and eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and your country, and you will move the world.

We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. And then comes the Gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this, to forget self in God.

Selfishness at the core is to think you have a special problem- a problem that God cannot deal with, that God didn’t deal with at the cross. You do not have anything special that has been dealt out to you.

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

By developing a sense of respect for others and a concern for their welfare, we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and enhance our sense of kindness, which is a natural source of goodness.

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.

And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

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.

Mysticism has often been misunderstood as the attempt to escape this simple, phenomenal world to a more pure existence in heaven beyond. This is not mysticism, but Gnosticism. Biblical mysticism is the attempt to exit 'this world' to an alternative reality that pervades the old order. Its goal is to jettison the mind-set that says 'greed is good,' selfishness is normal,' and 'killing is necessary.' Mysticism in biblical terms is not escapism, as so many have caricatured it, but a fight for ethics and social change.

Wisdom means that it gives you detachment, detachment from all that is selfishness, self-centredness, self-obsession, ego - all connected with self.

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

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.

It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

There is a need for everyone's brain to be imprinted with more self-enhancing impulses: the impulse to peace over violence, love over fear, compassion over selfishness.

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

You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing?

Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.

WHAT IF we all treat other people as we wish to be treated? MORE happiness. LESS selfishness, crime, fraud, hatred, terrorism, wars.

The hardest work you and I will ever do is to put off our selfishness. It is heavy lifting!

The squirrel hoards nuts and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.

Judeo-Christian conservatism overcomes natural selfishness.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

It is folly to abstain all day long from food, but fail to abstain from sin and selfishness.

Individualism has come in for an enormous amount of criticism over the years. It still does. It is widely assumed to be synonymous with selfishness...But the main reason why so many people in power have always disliked individualism is because it is individualists who are ever keenest to prevent the abuse of authority.

Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.

To practice Zen Buddhism is to train oneself to eliminate hatred, anger and selfishness and to develop loving-kindness towards all.

As you help those in need, selfishness will fall away. And, without even noticing you will find your own fulfillment.

It's almost selfishness, taking care of your mental health. You can't just not do it.

We are close to God when we are close to people. If we think of God as something in favor of the betterment of human beings, and if we act in a way that brings about that betterment-if we do not cling to riches, selfishness, or greed-then I believe we are getting closer to God.