Quotes About Selfishness

Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf - seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

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

When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue; not by wire pulling and demagoguery; not by the arts of popularity; not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency; but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country; by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

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.

The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.

We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Cultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of lust, hatred, greed, selfishness, and jealousy. Then only you can manifest it externally. Then only, those who come in contact with you, will be benefited by your vibrations of peace and harmony.

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.

Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.

Thread of Selfishness in Web of Life.—Deuteronomy contains much instruction regarding what the law is to us, and the relation we shall sustain to God as we reverence and obey

We need leadership that can elevate religion and morality to their position of paramount importance and thus eliminate growing selfishness, immorality and materialism.

As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S.

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.

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it?

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.

One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back.

This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

Happiness begins where selfishness ends.

I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

It is selfishness which is the cause of most of our misery.

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.

When we accept Christ we enter into three new relationships: (1) We enter into a new relationship with God. The judge becomes the father; the distant becomes the near; strangeness becomes intimacy and fear becomes love. (2) We enter into a new relationship with our fellow men. Hatred becomes love; selfishness becomes service; and bitterness becomes forgiveness. (3) We enter into a new relationship with ourselves. Weakness becomes strength; frustration becomes achievement; and tension becomes peace.

Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates. Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.

Take away someone’s fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty . . . and you take away their compassion. Take away someone’s aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

True patriots believe that freedom from responsibility is selfishness, freedom from sacrifice is cowardice, freedom from tolerance is prejudice, freedom from stewardship is exploitation, and freedom from compassion is cruelty.

The sin which is indulged to the greatest extent, and which separates us from God and produces so many contagious spiritual disorders, is selfishness.

Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.

Camera but no selfies, which represent selfishness and egotism. Social media? Again: not really me.

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

Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.

There is a big, beautiful world that could be destroyed by selfishness and foolishness. We musicians have it without power to save it. In a small way, every single one of us counts.

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

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