Selfishness Quotes - Page 24

• Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness.

  Patrick Lencioni

  Failing

  Patrick Lencioni (2012). “The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business”, p.59, John Wiley & Sons

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• In short, selfishness is the opposite of love.

  Tim LaHaye

  Opposites

  Tim LaHaye (2014). “Spirit-Controlled Temperament”, p.201, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• Satanism represents a form of controlled selfishness.

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Satanism, Form, Controlled

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• We're all basically made of the same stuff: generosity and selfishness, goodness and greed.

  Madeleine M. Kunin

  Generosity, Greed, Stuff

  "E Pluribus Unum or Social Darwinism?" by Madeleine M. Kunin, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 26, 2011.

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• The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.

  Charles Fourier

  Children, Able, Poverty

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• To the end, I will remain a child of Europe, of worry and of shame. I have no message of hope to deliver. For the West, I do not feel hatred. At most I feel a great contempt. I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism and death. We have created a system in which it has simply become impossible to live, and what's more, we continue to export it.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Children, Europe, Worry

  Michel Houellebecq (2003). “Platform: A Novel”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• The hope for the twentieth century rests on recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the nineteenth-century characteristics just mentioned (materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices) and going back to other characteristics that our Western Society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding a increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self discipline.

  Carroll Quigley

  War, Compassion, Men

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• Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
  bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.

  Frans de Waal

  Peaceful, Bipolar, Apes

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• Tenderness and respect-never selfishness-must be the guiding principles in the intimate relationship between husband and wife

  Howard W. Hunter

  Marriage, Husband, Intimate Relationships

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• Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love. While love asks us to deny ourselves for the sake of another, selfishness demands we put ourselves first at their expense. When we choose to be self-centered, we become less kind and content—more needy, sensitive, and demanding. More unsatisfiable. Moodiness and impatience, laziness and irresponsibility, are only selfishness in disguise.

  Stephen Kendrick

  Self, Capacity To Love, Demand

  Stephen Kendrick, Alex Kendrick (2013). “The Love Dare for Parents”, p.26, B&H Publishing Group

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• We live in a world filled with language. Language imparts identity, meaning, and perspective to our human community. Writers are either polluters or part of the clean-up team. Just as the language of power and greed has the potential to destroy us, the language of reason and empathy has the power to save us. Writers can inspire a kinder, fairer, more beautiful world, or invite selfishness, stereotyping, and violence. Writers can unite people or divide them.

  Mary Pipher

  Beautiful, Team, People

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• Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Moral Behavior, Conflict, Higher

  "The Pragmatics of Patriotism". Address at the U.S. Naval Academy, April 5, 1973.

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• Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.

  William Mountford

  God, Children, Night

  William Mountford (1874). “Euthanasy: Or, Happy Talk Towards the End of Life”, p.503

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• Selfishness has never been admired.

  C. S. Lewis

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Mere Christianity”, p.17, HarperCollins UK

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• There are points in your life, especially if you have creative ambitions, where selfishness is necessary.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Ambition, Creative, Ifs

  "Kris Kristofferson: What I've Learned" by Scott Carrier, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Love, Risk, Age

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1995). “The Lost World and Other Stories”, p.5, Wordsworth Editions

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• Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Sacrifice, Hatred, World

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• At no time and in no circumstances should a Communist place his personal interests first; he should subordinate them to the interests of the nation and of the masses. Hence, selfishness, slacking, corruption, seeking the limelight, and so on, are most contemptible, while selflessness, working with all one's energy, whole-hearted devotion to public duty, and quiet hard work will command respect.

  Mao Zedong

  Hard Work, Firsts, Energy

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.137, Lulu.com

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• The Holy Spirit is the immediate source of all holiness. He is entirely sincere, and perfect in love. He is generous. He is pure in heart, free from selfishness, and never swerves from the path of duty. He is deep like a fountain. He sends forth his virtues in due season. He speaks, and men believe him; he acts, and men are gladdened by him. He possesses all heavenly virtues. He is one with Heaven.

  Griffith John

  Believe, Heart, Men

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• No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Social, Social Good, Universal

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2011). “Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept”, p.20, Transaction Publishers

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• Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Eye, Writing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.256, Library of America

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• Selfishness is much more than an ordinary problem because it activates all the cardinal sins! It is the detonator in the breaking of the Ten Commandments.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Ordinary, Problem, Sin

  Neal A. Maxwell (1991). “Men and Women of Christ”, Bookcraft Pubs

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• Why all of these broken homes? What happens to marriages that begin with sincere love and a desire to be loyal and faithful and true one to another? There is no simple answer. I acknowledge that. But it appears to me that there are some obvious reasons that account for a very high percentage of these problems. I say this out of experience in dealing with such tragedies. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most of it.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Home, Simple, Loyal And Faithful

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• The dictionary describes a selfish person as one who is 'concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking pleasure or well-being without regard for others.' May we add, a selfish person is often one who refers to 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine' rather than to 'we,' 'ours,' 'yours,' or 'theirs.' This person is anxious to be in the limelight, to be on center stage in life's little dramas. He or she may be a poor listener, or a conversation monopolizer. Selfishness is the great unknown sin. No selfish person ever thought himself to be selfish.

  H. Burke Peterson

  Drama, Selfish, Add

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• Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Simple, Complexes, Primaries

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