Selfishness Quotes - Page 26

• Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.

  Anne Rice

  Men, Needs, Cynicism

  Anne Rice (2011). “The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned”, p.1006, Ballantine Books

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• Satan had two conditions [to his plan]: the first was the denial of agency, and the second, that he would have the honor. In other words, something had to be in it for him. And thus he became the father of lies and selfishness. Taking up one's cross and following the Savior means overcoming selfishness; it is a commitment to serve others. Selfishness is one of the baser human traits, which must be subdued and overcome. We torture our souls when we focus on getting rather than giving.

  James E. Faust

  Selfish, Lying, Father

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• When you go out there and do the things you're supposed to do, people view you as selfish.

  Wilt Chamberlain

  Basketball, Selfish, Views

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• One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back.

  Martin Amis

  Children, Father, Unseen

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• And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Giving, Groups

  "Now" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org.

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• Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see - Egoism, Arrogance, Conceit, Selfishness, Greed, Lust, Intolerance, Anger, Lying, Cheating, Gossiping and Slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then will be ready to fight the enemy you can see.

  Al-Ghazali

  Cheating, Lying, Islamic

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• We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.

  B. C. Forbes

  Happiness, Suicidal, Enjoy

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• Selfishness is the root and source of all natural and moral evils.

  Nathanael Emmons

  Roots, Evil, Moral

  Nathanael Emmons (1860). “The Works of Nathanael Emmons, D.D., Third Pastor of the Church in Franklin, Mass: With a Memoir of His Life”, p.195

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• There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The person who will not refrain from expressing his or her sentiments and manifesting his or her feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest person, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites.

  Arthur Helps

  Honesty, Hypocrite, Expression

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• The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others.

  Pliny the Elder

  Knowledge, Science, Scarcity

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• True patriots believe that freedom from responsibility is selfishness, freedom from sacrifice is cowardice, freedom from tolerance is prejudice, freedom from stewardship is exploitation, and freedom from compassion is cruelty.

  Eric Liu

  Believe, Responsibility, Sacrifice

  Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer (2012). “The True Patriot”, p.20, Sasquatch Books

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• Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation...We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life...life is a gift not a threat.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Struggle, Roots, Abortion

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• For Astrid, no matter what challenges they go through, they are going to face each other. It's hard for a daughter to accept that her mother is that selfish and that terrible.

  Alison Lohman

  Daughter, Mother, Selfish

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• The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Rights, People

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.218, Cambridge University Press

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• Selfishness is weakness. But loving and caring for others is a position of power beyond anything we can possibly imagine.

  Joel Osteen

  Love, Inspirational, Jesus

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• But the most important lesson I have learned in my twenty years or research on morality is that nearly all people are morally motivated. Selfishness is a powerful force, particularly in the decisions of individuals, but whenever groups of people come together to make a sustained effort to change the world, you can bet that they are pursuing a vision of virtue, justice, or sacredness.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Powerful, Selfish, Years

  Jonathan Haidt (2006). “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”, p.242, Basic Books

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• Love . . . [is] a lack of personal selfishness.

  Theodore M. Burton

  Love, Selfish, Love Is

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• A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.

  James Mackintosh

  Self, Vices, Harbors

  Sir James Mackintosh (1834). “A general view of the progress of ethical philosophy: chiefly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”, p.117

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• Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

  Alan Garner

  Family, Long, Parent

  Alan Garner (2013). “The Owl Service”, p.6, HarperCollins UK

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

  Anuj

  People

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• Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it.

  Mason Cooley

  Doe, Charity, Worship

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

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Self Absorption, Absorption

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• We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own.

  Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

  Reason, Discovering, Clash

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• I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Latin, Latin Proverb

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• Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Believe, Opposites, People

  "The Chasm: The Future Is Calling (Part One)". Essay by G. Edward Griffin, 2003.

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