Popular quotes about Selfishness! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 8
Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
David MitchellPolitics 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.
Calvin CoolidgeI like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.
Richard HammondThe more our hearts and minds are turned to assisting others less fortunate than we, the more we will avoid the spiritually cankering effects that result from greed, selfishness and overindulgence.
Joe J. ChristensenSelfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
David Sloan WilsonI don't think there's any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.
Christopher HitchensLet us make a pledge that, if not all day or all night long, at least for a few moments every day, we will make an effort to experience love, love that is free from selfishness, free from desire, free from expectation, love that is complete freedom.
Gurumayi ChidvilasanandaAsceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.
Florence Nightingale... the hey-day of a woman's life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.
Elizabeth Cady StantonMy best quality is that I'm a big hearted person. I'm resilient, too. My worst quality is selfishness, although everyone is guilty of that to an extent. Everyone should be, I think - you need to respect yourself.
Matthew McConaugheySo, the first thing we should introspect - are we concerned about ourselves ? All the time do we think that we are suffering, we have this problem, that problem, or this should be done, that should be done. If the attention is on that, that all the time you are worried about yourself, then you cannot break, you cannot break through this shell of your being which is under the domination of your mental selfishness or self centeredness.
Nirmala SrivastavaFor when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?
George MacDonaldThe truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.
William Graham SumnerCome back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart.
Cassandra ClareA gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Richard DawkinsIn order to swim one takes off all one's clothes--in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc., before one is sufficiently naked.
Soren KierkegaardImagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.
Stefan MolyneuxOne reason that a truth and reconciliation process is needed for group selection is to return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwinโs solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled โRethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiologyโ: Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
David Sloan WilsonIt's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. AudenA self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiAnd when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt - this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.
Elizabeth GilbertYour conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
Richard BachWisdom means that it gives you detachment, detachment from all that is selfishness, self-centredness, self-obsession, ego - all connected with self.
Nirmala SrivastavaA semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.
Charles Caleb ColtonSelfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.
Israel ZangwillDeeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life.
Karen ArmstrongGetting enough of what you want without depriving anyone else is the ultimate act of selfishness and sanity.
Joy BrowneWe receive mixed messages about taking good care of ourselves. Love thy neighbor as thyself means to love thyself and thy neighbor. Yet, self-love often is confused with selfishness and conceit. We are selfish when we do not love and accept ourselves, and attempt to take from others to fill the emptiness. Conceit indicates low self-worth and an attempt to conceal it. It is difficult to extend to others what you have not been able to give yourself. Take good care of yourself so you can care about the rest of us.
Jennifer JamesIf pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with moral. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it's contrary, selfishness, that act most strongly in us.
African SpirSelfishness is the controlling force of sinful living. It is this motive which pulsates through the natural mind, emotions and will - self-pleasing, self-serving, living for self.
Walter J ChantrySelfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.
John OwenThe way to freedom is through service to others. The way to happiness is through meditation and being in tune with God... break the barriers of your ego, shed selfishness, free yourself from the consciousness of the body, forget yourself, do away with this prison house of incarnations, melt your heart in all, be one with creation.
Paramahansa YoganandaThe greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others above our own. That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love. The ideal God holds for us is to form families in the way most likely to lead to happiness and away from sorrow.
Henry B. EyringA gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.
Henry Ward BeecherRight-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.
Hal CrowtherI believe we are most likely to succeed when ambition is focused on noble and worthy purposes and outcomes rather than on goals set out of selfishness.
John WoodenTyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.
Franz KafkaCollectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.
G. Edward Griffin