Selfishness Quotes - Page 2

We hurt people, when we give ourselves more value than others.

Sometimes you think you're helping someone up, but they're actually pulling you down. This is the painful dynamic of dealing with someone who is incurably selfish.

But then, I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too wrapped up in my own drama.

People who are depressed at the thought that all our motives are selfish are [confused]. They have mixed up ultimate causation (why something evolved by natural selection) with proximate causation (how the entity works here and now). [A] good way to understand the logic of natural selection is to imagine that genes are agents with selfish motives. [T]he genes have metaphorical motives — making copies of themselves — and the organisms they design have real motives. But they are not the same motives. Sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is wire unselfish motives into a human brain — heartfelt, unstinting, deep-in-the-marrow unselfishness. The love of children (who carry one's genes into posterity), a faithful spouse (whose genetic fate is identical to one's own), and friends and allies (who trust you if you're trustworthy) can be bottomless and unimpeachable as far as we humans are concerned (proximate level), even if it is metaphorically self-serving as far as the genes are concerned (ultimate level). Combine this with the common misconception that the genes are a kind of essence or core of the person, and you get a mongrel of Dawkins and Freud: the idea that the metaphorical motives of the genes are the deep, unconscious, ulterior motives of the person. That is an error.

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.Listen to it carefully.

Committing suicide essentially said to friends and loved ones and the world at large that you were the only thing that mattered, that your problems were hopeless that you deserved to escape from them and to hell with everyone else.Suicide was nothing more than a way to look in the eye of the people who loved you and say, "My pain is paramount and I want it to end. The pain you will feel when I am gone, and the guilt you will experience at not having been able to stop me, do not matter to me. I am willing for you to suffer for the rest of your life so that I can take the easy way out of mine.

Ambition distorts even memory itself. John Quincy Adams

The only thing I hate about good people is that they like making their being good people bad people’s problem.

Do you know, I am putting off ending this letter as though the end would be the end of something I want to hold on to. That's not true of course - just a feeling like the quick one of hexing your trip so you couldn't go. The mind is capable of any selfishness and it thinks unworthy things whether you want it or not. Best to admit it is a bad child rather than to pretend it is always a good one. Because a bad child can improve but a good one is a liar and nothing can improve a liar.

You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.

Not everyone who has helped or is helping you wanted or wants to help you.

An obese ego is just about the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry. So maybe you should stop feeding it.

No single bad person regards themselves as a bad person.

Knowledge is power is time is money. Meaning that if I shared knowledge, it would tantamount to sharing power or money.

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

It is an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce.

What you withhold in this life will be withheld from you in the next.

Selfishness leads to nothingness. Generosity and benevolence leads to great reward,” he explained.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." &“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people”– –

If I worship the fact that I don’t worship anything, amongst other things what I’m worshipping is denial.

I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets.

If I give with the motive to get, regardless of the degree to which that motive besets me, I will walk away impoverished and I will leave those to whom I have given just as impoverished as I have now found myself.

I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending of this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.

Don't mistake keen, honest observations as complaints. When you receive a help, a donation or a favour, never forget to be grateful and thankful for the ones who have been there for you.Learn to respect the space of people whose hearts have been treated like a doormat but they have answered more important priorities which all contribute towards the best of the welfare of the recipients of their generous and humble commitment among their choices and decisions for whom and with whom to reach out for." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my novel, If I Could Tell You

Purpose, meaning, and hope are the edge of a coin; on one side is imprinted the image of God; and on the other is self … As complicated as life seems at times, the mystery of fulfillment and the paradox of contentment are as simple as that. What makes life complicated, I suspect, isn’t the choice between these two value systems and the paths they define, sin and holiness, so much as it is our unwillingness to make the choice between the two.

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.

Love, just to love. Don't wait for a reason to love. That is selfishness.

It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.

One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands, 'What's in it for me?

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

She actually said with an emotion that she seldom let appear, "Let me come with you," and he laughed. He meant yes or no - either perhaps. But it was not his meaning - it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don't care. He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her...

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny sefishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they are not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.

She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?' 'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere.

If I have attached anything to sacrifice other than loss, I have at some level assumed a pay-off. And if I’ve assumed a pay-off, I’m only assuming a sacrifice.

If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd be wasting your time while others are learning how to climb the tree

Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration unselfishness the only real religion.

The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence.

Beware of those who are stingy, for they would rather sting you than give you anything.

If it’s the benefit to myself that drives my decisions, I can know that I’m driving down a long road with a short bridge.

There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.

What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.

Sacrifice” and “self” both begin with the same letter, but the spelling is way different after that.

In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

If it’s about me, I can be assured that there will be a bunch of empty chairs in the auditorium of my life; save the one I’m sitting in.

To esteem what makes you holy over what makes you happy - that is the greatest dare.

If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.

No one as consistently, spectacularly, and admittedly greedy as Donald Trump could possibly give two poops about us. Absolutely impossible. I will go so far as to say that, if elected, Donald Trump would be the least likely President in the history of our nation to do anything for any of us that wouldn't also benefit him.

A rich life is lived from a giving heart not a selfish mind.

In 1948, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was asked in 2003, and this time it wasn’t 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent.

You, sir, are not only a selfish asshole, but you're a coward. You didn't have the balls to stand and fight for what was yours, instead you chose to flee and force others into a fight that wasn't even theirs to begin with.

It’s really good to love yourself, just don’t love yourself so much in a way that you will not be able to see anyone else!

As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

[G]iving yourself some loving attention is not selfish. It is sensible. If you feel loved and cherished--even if it is only by yourself--then you will have more love to give to others, too. (83)

Lust, anger, attachment, greed, over pride be,Jealousy, selfishness, injustice, cruelty, ego truly;- 153 -

We are not only contingent beings, dependent on the love and will of a Creator whom we cannot know experientially except in so far as he reveals to us our personal relationship with him as his sons - we are also sinners who have FREELY REPUDIATED this relationship. We have rebelled against him. The spirit of rebellious refusal persists in our heart even when we try to return to him. Much could be said, at this point, about all the subtlety and ingenuity of religious egoism which is one of the worst and most ineradicable forms of self-deception. Sometimes one feels that a well-intentioned and inculpable atheist is in many ways better off - and gives more glory to God - than some people whose bigoted complacency and inhumanity to others are signs of the most obvious selfishness! Hence we not only need to recover an awareness of our creaturehood; we also must repair the injury done to truth and to love by this repudiation, this infidelity. But how? Humanly speaking, there is no way in which we can do this.

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract. - pg. 157

Love was selfish, wasn't it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another's mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.