Selfishness Quotes - Page 25

• 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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• Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nursing, Vanity, Firsts

  "The Life of Florence Nightingale" by Edward Tyas Cook, (p. 369), 1913.

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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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• 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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• The vital Christian arouses opposition because he is a standing rebuke to the selfishness and sin of those around him.

  John Hagee

  Christian, Sin, Rebuke

  John Hagee (1989). “Being Happy in an Unhappy World”

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• The message of this season that is applicable throughout the year lies not in the receiving of earthly presents and treasures but in the forsaking of selfishness and greed and in going forward, seeking and enjoying the gifts of the Spirit, which Paul said are 'love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,meekness,temperance: against such there is no law' (Gal. 5:22-23).

  James E. Faust

  Love, Lying, Gifts Of The Spirit

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• At the heart of the message of the Savior of the world is a single, glorious, wonderful, still largely untried concept. In its simplest terms the message is that we should seek to overcome the selfishness we all seem to be born with, that we should overcome human nature and think of others before self.

  James E. Faust

  Heart, Thinking, Self

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• Without the help of selfishness, the human animal would never have developed. Egoism is the vine by which man hoisted himself out of the swamp and escaped from the jungle.

  Blaise Cendrars

  Animal, Men, Vines

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• The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

  Alexander Fraser Tytler

  Spiritual, Average, Years

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• The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrown of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wide disorder the citadel of misrule.

  Grover Cleveland

  Integrity, Justice, Political

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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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• The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.

  M. Scott Peck

  Ignorance, Pride, Evil

  M. Scott Peck (2015). “The People Of The Lie”, p.302, Random House

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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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• In a word, most bad attitudes are the result of selfishness.

  John C. Maxwell

  Attitude, Bad Attitude, Results

  John C. Maxwell (2008). “Team Maxwell 2in1 (Winning With People/17 Indisputable Laws)”, p.115, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Caring for our own hearts isn't selfishness; it's how we begin to love.

  John Eldredge

  Heart, Caring

  John Eldredge (2005). “The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings”, p.286, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.

  George Berkeley

  Mean, Surly, Squires

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.363

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• ... so large a portion of those who hold much capital, instead of using their various advantages for the greatest good of those around them, employ the chief of them for mere selfish indulgences; thus inflicting as much mischief on themselves, as results to others from their culpable neglect. A great portion of the rich seem to be acting on the principle, that the more God bestows on them, the less are they under obligation to practise any self-denial, in fulfilling his benevolent plan of raising our race to intelligence and holiness.

  Catharine Beecher

  Selfish, Responsibility, Race

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• Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life.

  Karen Armstrong

  Generosity, Deeds, Tiny

  "Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet". Book by Karen Armstrong, 2001.

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• It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Passion, Doctrine, Mysterious

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• Would that our harsh judgments could be restrained, our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down, our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter without the slightest tinge of human' infirmity, the All-Merciful and the All-Just.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Passion, Hands, Broken

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 357, 1895.

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• My self-absorption warms me; yours boils me.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Self Absorption, Absorption

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• Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it.

  Mason Cooley

  Doe, Charity, Worship

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• Selfishness even binds many people, but blindly without having any liking for one another.

  Anuj

  People

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• It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.

  Richard Whately

  Annoyed, Important, Cheerful

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• Be not in the desire of thine own ease.

  Saadi

  Desire, Ease

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