Selfish Quotes - Page 19

• Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.

  Sri Yukteswar Giri

  Love, Heart, Forever

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• It is something of a miracle that individual selfish decisions (in a market economy) must lead to a collectively efficient outcome.

  Steven Landsburg

  Decision, Miracle, Outcomes

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• I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Women, Jealous, Pygmalion

  George Bernard Shaw (2016). “Pygmalion”, p.29, Xist Publishing

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• It's usually pointed out that women are not fit for political power, and ought not to be trusted with a vote because they are politically ignorant, socially prejudiced, narrow-minded, and selfish. True enough, but precisely the same is true of men!

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Political, Voting

  Tribune (London), 12 Mar. 1906

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• The soul of me is very selfish. I have gone my way after a fashion that made me the center of the plan. And you who are so individual, who are so independent a spirit, whose soul is also a kingdom, have been so loyal, so forgiving, so self-sacrificing in your willingness to live my life. Nothing but love cold have accomplished so wonderful a thing.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Fashion, Independent, Sacrifice

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• All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

  Lydia M. Child

  Failure, People, Looks

  Letter to John Fraser, 1868.

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• Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.

  James Madison

  Men, Human Nature, Being Human

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.

  Gertrude Stein

  Honesty, Virtue, Enough

  Gertrude Stein, Brenda Wineapple (2002). “Three Lives”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

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• Sure
  love is cruel
  and selfish
  and totally obtuse--
  at least, blinded by the light,
  young love is.

  William Carlos Williams

  Love Is, Light, Sure Love

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.289, New Directions Publishing

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• a society driven mainly by selfish individualism has all the potential for sustainability of a collection of angry scorpions in a bottle.

  David Ehrenfeld

  Scorpions, Bottles, Individualism

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• In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love.

  Joyce Maynard

  Mother, Children, Airplane

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• Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Beauty, Expression, Imagination

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.327, New Directions Publishing

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• When I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.

  Chris Evert

  Happiness, Teacher, School

  "'I've Lived A Charmed Life'". Interview with Sally Jenkins, www.si.com. May 25, 1992.

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• As a director, you have a thousand things going on in your head, and of course, that's going to be difficult. That's going to mean that some things get overlooked. And so, for us as performers, being the selfish pricks that we are, we're sitting there being concerned about ourselves all the time and our character's through-line.

  Jamie Campbell Bower

  Character, Mean, Sitting

  Source: collider.com

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• As an athlete you're taught to be selfish. When I'm training, it's usually all about me.

  Ronda Rousey

  Athlete, Training, Taught

  Source: bleacherreport.com

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• Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Ignorance, Mirrors

  Thomas Sowell (1987). “Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays”, William Morrow

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• The world may not applaud us for wiping running noses, driving in carpools, or talking with our teenager into the wee hours of the morning. And until they are trained, our children might not thank us either. But as we set aside our own selfish desires and glorify God by joyfully serving our children, we are pursuing true greatness according to the Bible. Let us do so with tenderness, affection, and with a smile!

  Carolyn Mahaney

  Running, Morning, Children

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• How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Energy, Earth

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• Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, andhave an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Umpires, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.185, Penguin

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• At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Work, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.46, Library of America

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• Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Passion, Simple

  Letter to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

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• Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.

  Gretchen Rubin

  People, Goal, Answers

  "Are You Happy Now?". Chat with readers, www.slate.com. January 15, 2009.

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• I do enjoy my own company. I cannot imagine anybody entertaining me more than I do. If it sounds selfish, I don't care. I made it a religion almost.

  Manolo Blahnik

  Sound, Care, Imagine

  Interview with Tim Blanks, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 13, 2013.

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• To join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Two, Perfect, Soul

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• I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society-he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity.

  Arthur Koestler

  Party, Men, Hands

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