Disinterested Quotes - Page 2

• Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.

  Richard Dawkins

  Objective Truth, World, Materials

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• Love is nourished only by sacrifices, and the more a soul refuses natural satisfactions, the stronger and more disinterested becomes her tenderness.

  Therese of Lisieux

  God, Sacrifice, Love Is

  Marc Foley, OCD, St. Therese of Lisieux (2013). “Story of a Soul The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux Study Edition”, ICS Publications

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• Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish. None of those adjectives describe the Millennials I've been privileged to meet and work with.

  Chelsea Clinton

  Selfish, Adjectives, Millennials

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• The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mistake, Errors, Virtue

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.8, Hayes Barton Press

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• Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.

  Marie Curie

  Men, Humanity, Dreamer

  "Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe". Book by Michael A. Dopita and Ralph S. Sutherland, 2003.

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• The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage, and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Honesty, Hopeful, Intellectual

  Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy (2001). “The Power of Ideas”, p.52, Princeton University Press

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• Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through the disinterested performance of action.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Perfection, Doe, Belief

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1549, Manonmani Publishers

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• Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Effort, Comfort, Selfless

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• Agape is disinterested love. . . . Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. . . . Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Faith, People, Enemy

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• We are hungry for tenderness,
  in a world where everything abounds
  we are poor of this feeling
  which is like a caress
  for our heart
  we need these small gestures
  that make us feel good
  Tenderness
  is a disinterested and generous love,
  that does not ask anything else
  to be understood and appreciated.

  Alda Merini

  Heart, Generous Love, Feel Good

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• Art includes everything which stimulates the desire to live; science includes everything which sharpens the desire to know. Art, even the most disinterested, the most disembodied, is the auxiliary of life.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Art, Knowledge, Science

  "Selections from All His Works".

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• I couldn't love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Thinking, Views, Artistic

  Interview with Bianca Jagger, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 3, 2011.

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• There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mind, Boring, Subjects

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• Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Use, Professional Competence, Philosopher

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.835, Simon and Schuster

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• an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell... the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Cat, Dust

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.55, Chartwell

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• Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Spring, Love Is, Joy

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Remember us in your prayers that we grow not weary in well doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked upon by most of those to whom our lives are devoted as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labor - benevolence - is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view; but He who died for us, and Whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. We should have grace to follow in His steps.

  David Livingstone

  Prayer, Views, Should Have

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• We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action

  Woodrow Wilson

  Spiritual, Character, Thinking

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Addresses of President Wilson, January 27-February 3, 1916”

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• I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

  Stephen Fry

  Silly, Language, Distinction

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• There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, Men, Evil

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.197, University of Chicago Press

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• 'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

  George Washington

  Real, Character, Pride

  Nancy Spannaus, Christopher White, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas More, Henry VIII (2015). “The Political Economy of the American Revolution”, p.290, Executive Intelligence Review

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• In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Sacrifice, Men, Compassion

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• The majority of men cannot be made disinterested for life by exhortation, by religious services, by any expenditure of subsidized works, or even by grave and manifest public need. They can be made permanently unselfish only by being helped to become disinterested in their individual purposes. In the complete democracy a man must in some way be made to serve the nation in the very act of contributing to his own individual fulfillment. Not until his personal action is dictated by disinterested motives can there be any such harmony between private and public interests.

  Herbert Croly

  Religious, Men, Democracy

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• A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Book, Passion

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1912-1918”, Harcourt

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• Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Sublime, Action

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