Selfishness Quotes - Page 20

• Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Men, Superstitions

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1980). “Shelley on Love: An Anthology”, p.83, Univ of California Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The reason why wicked men and devils hate God is, because they see Him in relation to themselves. Their hearts rise up in rebellion, because they see Him opposed to their selfishness.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Hate, Heart, Men

  Charles Grandison Finney (1837). “Lectures to Professing Christians”, p.10

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• Selfishness alone is sufficient to bring apocalypse upon a nation.

  Khem Veasna

  Apocalypse, Nations, Sufficient

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• Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  War, Unnecessary, Obsolete

  "Why I/We Celebrate Buckminster Fuller’s Birthday (July 12, 1895) Every Year" by L. Steven Sieden, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 9, 2015.

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• If you must hate, if hatred is the leaven of your life, which alone can give flavor, then hate what should be hated: falsehood, violence, selfishness.

  Ludwig Borne

  Hate, Giving, Hatred

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• This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

  Adolf Hitler

  Attitude, Sacrifice, Men

  "Mein Kampf". Book by Adolf Hitler, Chapter 11, Ralph Manheim translation, 1925.

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• Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  People, Evil, Giving

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• We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness behind.

  John H. Groberg

  Behinds

  John H. Groberg (1993). “The Other Side of Heaven”, Bookcraft, Incorporated

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• That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.

  Aristotle

  Thinking, Numbers, Care

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.44, Aristotle

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• The only care That I shall share Shall be the care of others, And on the road I'll halve the load Of overburdened brothers. I rather guess It's selfishness That drives me to such actions, For in this plan I find I can Forget my own distractions.

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Brother, Care, Helping

  John Kendrick Bangs (1920). “The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse for Every Day”

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• As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

  Anthony Kiedis

  Dad, Father, Kids

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• Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Gratitude, Real, Rewards

  Robert A. Heinlein (1988). “To Sail Beyond the Sunset”

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• No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends: an obscure image diffracted, exaggerated, in the wonderfulest way by natural dimness and selfishness; getting tenfold more diffracted by exasperation of contest, till at length it become all but irrecognis-able.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mean, Men, Able

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.123, Cambridge University Press

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• Faith, courage, and intelligent and uninterrupted awareness - these qualities are to be present whether one is wide awake, half asleep, or in deep slumber. An individual who lives like this performs his daily actions with a mind free from selfishness. This is poise in action. And this poise leads to that serenity which is in the truest sense a healthy mind in a healthy body.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Intelligent, Serenity, Healthy

  B. K. S. Iyengar (2016). “Sparks of Divinity: The Teachings of B. K. S. Iyengar”, p.107, Shambhala Publications

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• Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called "self-interestedness". This was not a portrait of man "warts and all". It was all wart - except that the dominating attribute was not considered a blemish.

  George Will

  Men, Self, Long

  George F. Will (1984). “Statecraft as Soulcraft”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

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• There is a prodigious selfishness in dreams: they live perfectly deaf and invulnerable amid the cries of the real world.

  George Santayana

  Dream, Real, World

  George Santayana (2009). “The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress”, p.274, The Floating Press

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• We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.

  Oswald Chambers

  Spiritual, Inspiration, Angel

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• I think for anyone who follows the 'artistic life,' a certain amount of selfishness and self-involvement is part of the package. You're probably already disregarding a certain material life you could have.

  David Chase

  Thinking, Artistic Life, Self

  "Q&A: David Chase Beyond The Sopranos". Interview with Simon Abrams, www.esquire.com. October 9, 2012.

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• It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.

  Criss Jami

  Fear, Pride, Emotional

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.130, Criss Jami

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• You must pray for yourself constantly. How could it be otherwise? We worship God by believing in Him, trusting Him, and loving Him wholeheartedly - and we can attain to that only through prayer. The sole object of our being here is that we may grow like Him - and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatever; so praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness - it is truly glorifying God.

  Emmet Fox

  Prayer, Believe, Trusting Him

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• The only struggle which religions can justify, the only struggle worthy of humans, is the moral struggle against humanity's own disordered passions, against every kind of selfishness, against attempts to oppress others, against every type of hatred and violence.

  Pope John Paul II

  Struggle, Passion, Hatred

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