Selfishness Quotes - Page 17

• A 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 Dawkins

  Would Be, Sitting, Body

  Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.88, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Let 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 Chidvilasananda

  Night, Long, Expectations

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• And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

  Thomas Merton

  Strong, Night, Soul

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• I 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 Hitchens

  Thinking, Needs, Reinforcement

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• It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.

  Harriet Martineau

  Baby, Nurse, Dies

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• That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us.

  Margaret Cho

  Selfish, Opportunity, Journey

  Margaret Cho (2006). “I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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• stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

  Laura Lippman

  Size, Stinginess, Currents

  Laura Lippman (1999). “In big trouble”

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• Throughout the 1980s, we did hear too much about individual gain and the ethos of selfishness and greed. We did not hear enough about how to be a good member of a community, to define the common good and to repair the social contract. And we also found that while prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.

  Hillary Clinton

  Powerful, Ethos, Community

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

  William Graham Sumner

  Envy, Lust, Vices

  William Graham Sumner (1919). “The Forgotten Man - Rediscovered After Fifty Years ...”

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• Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

  John Stuart Mill

  Want, Next, Causes

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.105, Hackett Publishing

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• There is only one force stronger than selfishness, and that is stupidity.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Stupidity, Stronger, Force

  Ellen Glasgow (1935). “Vein of Iron”

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• The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

  William J. Clinton

  Years, Greed, Age

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• We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Men, Rights, Forever

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• Only by realizing what selfishness and lack of generosity really are can the delicious fragrance of true love and effective generosity, which is not of the mind, burst forth in our hearts.

  Samael Aun Weor

  Heart, Generosity, Mind

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• The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it can make the wicked divine-and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Color, Meditation

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Meditation and Its Methods”, p.15, editionNEXT.com

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• Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?

  Albert Einstein

  Jesus, Abuse, Bags

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.24, Open Road Media

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• Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. Do not talk to him about the interests and rights of the human race; that little private business of his for the moment absorbs all his thoughts, and he hopes that public disturbances can be put off to some other time.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Rights, Race, Littles

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• While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Hands, Virtue, Benevolence

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• Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.

  Aristotle

  Degrees, Bigs

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• History of Ireland--lawlessness and turbulency, robbery and oppression, hatred and revenge, blind selfishness everywhere--no principle, no heroism. What can be done with it?

  William Allingham

  Revenge, Hatred, Heroism

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• One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale.

  Thomas Sowell

  Sacrifice, Doctrine, Irony

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• A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Unselfish, Persons, Place In Life

  Ivy Compton-Burnett (2011). “Elders and Betters”, p.72, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

  Agnes Repplier

  Men, Envy, Needs

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• The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest.

  Emile Souvestre

  Spring, Spurs, Action

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• It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

  Bram Stoker

  Roots, Evil, Way

  Bram Stoker, Mort Castle (2014). “Dracula”, p.125, "F+W Media, Inc."

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