Selfishness Quotes - Page 22

• Take away someone’s fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty . . . and you take away their compassion. Take away someone’s aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation.

  Veronica Roth

  Motivation, Compassion, Self

  4 Copy quote

• In the march towards Truth, anger, selfishness, hatred, etc., naturally give way, for otherwise Truth would be impossible to attain. A man who is swayed by passions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Anger, Passion, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi (2008). “My Experiments With Truth: An Autobiography”, p.362, Jaico Publishing House

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Because of my age and because there's more work on the small screen. What it's missing in quality it makes up for in quantity. From an actor's selfish point of view.

  Cesar Romero

  Missing You, Selfish, Views

  9 Copy quote

• Happiness must be shared. Selfishness it its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one's self. It is quiet, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It comes from within.

  William B. Ogden

  Happiness, Reflection, Self

  7 Copy quote

• For the academic the rhetorical sense of superiority through the possession of knowledge is essential for facing the daily grind, turning again to the otherwise boring article, braving the students who, fresh as each class may be, will still ask the same questions year after year. Psychological survival is not achieved without effort, and the environment must be managed, knocked about with one's elbows until it takes a shape comfortable to one's sense of self. This is not selfishness, for in reshaping the environment the academic is also reinvigorating the educational process.

  Robin Winks

  Educational, Teaching, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Kings, Power, Dust

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.10

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

  Katherine Paterson

  War, Two, Enemy

  5 Copy quote

• Smith, as we have said, was not the proponent of any one class. He was a slave to his system. His whole economic philosophy stemmed from his unquestioning faith in the ability of the market to guide the system to its point of highest return. The market — that wonderful social machine — would take care of society's needs if it was left alone. "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production," he wrote.

  Robert Heilbroner

  Letting Go, Philosophy, Class

  "The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Two, Roots, Justice

  13 Copy quote

• Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or the other or both parties to a marriage contract. Someone is thinking of self comforts, conveniences, freedoms, luxuries, or ease. Sometimes the ceaseless pin pricking of an unhappy, discontented, and selfish spouse can finally add up to serious physical violence. Sometimes people are goaded to the point where they erringly feel justified in doing the things that are so wrong. Nothing of course justifies sin.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Selfish, Party, Divorce

  24 Copy quote

• Understand the suffering of worldly existence.
  Abandon its causes of ignorance and selfishness.
  Practice the path of meditation and compassion.
  Awaken from suffering within Great Peace.

  Gautama Buddha

  Ignorance, Compassion, Practice

  11 Copy quote

• Right-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired.

  Hal Crowther

  Art, Successful, Order

  7 Copy quote

• There is no place for selfishness-and no place for fear! Do not be afraid, then, when love makes demands. Do not be afraid when love requires sacrifice

  Pope John Paul II

  Love, Christian, Sacrifice

  14 Copy quote

• A wise unselfishness is not a surrender of yourself to the wishes of anyone, but only to the best discoverable course of action.

  David Seabury

  Wise, Best Wishes, Action

  19 Copy quote

• Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle-a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

  Herman Melville

  Wise, Spiritual, Sweet

  Herman Melville (1995). “Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall-Street”, p.29, Lulu.com

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...rise above selfishness. This includes spiritual selfishness, when one looks toward personal edification and strengthening and has no other interest than one's own salvation. To be blessed is not an end in itself; we must be a blessing to others. All people have a talent in one way or another to touch and inspire other people's lives. Let us not only look inward and proudly say 'all is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth' (2 Ne. 28:21), but let us be a light unto a chaotic world.

  Hans B. Ringger

  Spiritual, Selfish, Blessed

  8 Copy quote

• Silence...leads us to make a gift of self rather than a selfishness that has been gift-wrapped ...Silence does not mean running away but rather recollecting ourselves in the open space of God.

  Madeleine Delbrel

  God, Faith, Running

  68 Copy quote

• If there's anything I'd like to preach about, the loudest, other than the Gospel, it's selfishness. If there's anything I'd like to impress upon the hearts and minds of my people, it's to get out of the self life.

  Jack Hyles

  Inspiration, Heart, Self

  6 Copy quote

• The dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness are contrary to the order of creation. ...A given culture reveals its understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption... a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible use of their power of choice.

  Pope John Paul II

  Educational, Teaching, Order

  4 Copy quote

• You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Relationship, Soulmate, Stars

  8 Copy quote

• The soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Exercise, Soul, Vigor

  4 Copy quote

• The gospel of licentiousness, of selfishness, of blaming all the difficulties of life on external factors - these are the things that are killing people today in ways that the slave whips and the overseers couldn't.

  Alan Keyes

  People, Political, Today

  4 Copy quote

• Happiness is not an end - it is only a means, and adjunct, a consequence. The Omnipotent Himself could never be supposed by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness construct the attributes of Divinity, to be absorbed throughout eternity in the contemplation of His own ineffable bliss, were it not identical with His ineffable goodness and love.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Mean, And Love, Divinity

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 10), 1858.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Compassion, Perspective

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.331, Vintage Canada

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm really interested in the difference between selfishness and generosity. It confuses me to no end because sometimes it all just feels like pure indulgence on my part.

  Nate Lowman

  Differences, Generosity, Sometimes

  "Studio Visit With Nate Lowman". Interview with Leo Fitzpatrick, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 19, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source