Egoism Quotes - Page 4

• For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake.

  Jean Giono

  Mistake, Character, Years

  Jean Giono, Michael McCurdy (2007). “The Man Who Planted Trees”, p.3, Chelsea Green Publishing

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• The egoist does not tolerate egoism.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Ego, Doe, Tolerate

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• Egoism... is not eliminated by economic reorganization or by material abundance. When basic needs are satisfied, new 'needs' emerge. In our society, people want no simply clothes, but fashionable clothes; not shelter, but a house to display their wealth and taste.

  Peter Singer

  Clothes, People, House

  Peter Singer (2000). “Marx: A Very Short Introduction”, p.121, OUP Oxford

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• I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty.

  Henri Barbusse

  Country, Believe, Men

  Henri Barbusse (1919). “Light”

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• It is merely the egoism of the man, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love.

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Men, Treasure, Want

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• Life is a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself and make others happy must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egoism; let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Independent, Make Others Happy, Would Be

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• I've lived history. I've made history, and I know I'll have my place in history. That's not egoism.

  John Diefenbaker

  Made, Knows

  John George Diefenbaker (1982). “The Wit & Wisdom of John Diefenbaker”, Hurtig Trade

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• But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.

  Stephen Mitchell

  Humility, Self, Arrogance

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• Where the world comes in my way - and it comes in my way everywhere - I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but - my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use.

  Max Stirner

  Cheer, Air, Order

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• Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.

  F. Sionil José

  Humanity, Courses

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• In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but egoism of a different quality.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Revenge, Quality, Different

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• Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see - Egoism, Arrogance, Conceit, Selfishness, Greed, Lust, Intolerance, Anger, Lying, Cheating, Gossiping and Slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then will be ready to fight the enemy you can see.

  Al-Ghazali

  Cheating, Lying, Islamic

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• A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of it's complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

  Francoise Sagan

  Sad, Beautiful, Regret

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Women, Hard Times, Law

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.40, Vintage

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• What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.

  Hermann Hesse

  Spring, Intellectual, World

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• My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Letting Go, Block, Race

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life.

  Albert Einstein

  Atheist, Eternity Of Life, If There Is A God

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.11, Broadway Books

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• That what appears to be egoism so often isn't.

  David Foster Wallace

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• Industry, technology, and commerce can thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.

  Adolf Hitler

  Lying, Sacrifice, Technology

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Violence, passion, indignation, loyalty, integrity, incorruptibility, shameless egoism, generosity, excitability, energy, a hundred horse-power drive - none of it very subtle: Ethel [Smyth] didn't deal in pastel shades, she went for the stronger colors, the blood-red, anything deep and pumping out of the arteries of the heart.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Loyalty, Horse, Integrity

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• Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

  George Eliot

  Men, Average, Careers

  George Eliot (1883). “The Essays of George Eliot”, p.34, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Our egoism gains nothing from acts of love, but the world gains all the more. Esotericism tells us that love is to the world what the Sun is for outer life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world. Love is the “moral” Sun of the world.

  Rudolf Steiner

  Love Is, World Love, Soul

  Rudolf Steiner (1998). “Love & Its Meaning in the World”, p.215, SteinerBooks

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• No more materialism, no more this egoism, I must become spiritual.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Materialism

  Swami Vivekananda (1964). “Complete Works”

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• All action of Sattva, a modification of Prakriti characterised by light and happiness, is for the soul. When Sattva is free from egoism and illuminated with the pure intelligence of Purusha, it is called the self-centred one, because in that state it becomes independent of all relations.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Independent, Light, Self

  Swami Vivekananda (2012). “Raja Yoga (Annotated Edition)”, p.135, Jazzybee Verlag

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• People interpret things through their owns lens, just the way they do the Bible. You can find justification for just about everything in the Bible. I think man has got a great ego when it comes to his God, whatever that is. It just seems to me that someone who wants to take on God's punishment, it just seems a huge egoism to think that he should appoint himself to take care of God's punishments.

  Bill Paxton

  Bible, Men, Thinking

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