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Altruism Quotes

Browse 595 quotes about Altruism.

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Altruism Quotes

“There's a fine line between participation and mockery.”

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Book:Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More
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“Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.”

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Book:The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition
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“We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”

IfsWorldWayWholeEarthTurnsBirthPureBuiltMachinesCreatorSelfishTyrannyRebelGenesAltruismWorld HistoryNurturingIndoctrinationCultivatingDisinterestedMemesSelfish Gene
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Peace must first be developed within an individual. And I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony. This atmosphere can be expanded and extended from the individual to his family, from the family to the community and eventually to the whole world.”

WorldFirstsBelieveWholeAbleIndividualI BelieveCommunityQualityCompassionBasesHarmonyFundamentalsWhole WorldAtmosphereAltruismPeace And Harmony
Author:Dalai Lama
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“If a man speculates on what 'society' should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men's lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them...that psychological confession reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men's capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life.”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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“Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence. A situation in which men and women, parents and children, people and animals, human institutions and the land all were in dynamic balance and not in any primitive sense at all. Language was fully developed, poetry may have been at its climax, dance, magic, poetics, altruism, philosophy. There's no reason to think that these things were not practiced as adroitly as we practice them today and it was under the boundary dissolving influence of psilocybin.”

PeopleThinkingMenYearsHumansKindMayChildrenHas BeensReasonPhilosophyTodayLastsLanguageParentAnimalExistenceSituationPracticeMagicInfluenceLandBalanceMen And WomenYears AgoInstitutionsBoundariesParadiseNo ReasonPrimitiveAltruismChildren And ParentsClimaxDissolvingPsilocybin
Author:Terence McKenna
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“Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to, every time. If it pains them to make a choice - if the choice looks like a 'sacrifice' - you can be sure that it is no nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness... the necessity of deciding between two things you want when you can't have both.”

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Book:Stranger in a Strange Land
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“As the biocentric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence. A balance is struck. Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism, all meld together to provide nurturance.”

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Book:Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place
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“Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes.”

TryingLooksMayHelpingMightShareExampleThousandMembersExpectationsOppositesJewExtremesAdmireSavingGrantedManifestationGenerousGasGenesAltruismDnaSelectionChamberFamily MembersReciprocityGas ChambersSchindler
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Each of us spends money on things that we do not really need. You could take the money you're spending on those unnecessary things and give it to this organization the Against Malaria Foundation which would take the money you had given and use it to buy nets to protect children. And we know reliably that if we provide nets, they're used, and they reduce the number of children dying from malaria. Fortunately more and more people are understanding this idea, and the result is a growing movement effective altruism.”

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Author:Peter Singer
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“I'd much rather be part of a society which greatly honors and respects people who are altruists and who are effective in their altruism, than one that either admires people because they're, you know, celebrity movie stars or because they're super wealthy just no matter what they do with their wealth because I think we ought to try to encourage more people to act in that way.”

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Author:Peter Singer
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“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

MenLightChoicesDecisionWalksCreativityDarknessCreativeGreatnessWords Of WisdomWalkingIntegrityCreatingDestructionCharitySelfishEvery ManAfrican AmericanGenerositySelfishnessDestructivePhilanthropyAltruismBe CreativeLight And DarknessBenevolenceEgoismPhilanthropicLight And DarkGive And TakeDarkness To LightGenerosity And KindnessKindness GenerositySelfish PeopleMan Of IntegrityKings And LoveDestructivenessGood KingsDeeds DoneSelfish MenCharity And GenerositySpiritual Darkness
Book:Strength to Love
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“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'”

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Book:Strength to Love
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“None of us are rational economic men as we're supposed to be portrayed in economic theory where mixes of passions, of desires, of moral principles, of self-deception, of altruism, of concern of others, of concerns for ourselves and an interest in our bank accounts. And social policies have to be responsive to the complexity of who we are as people or else, like the war on drugs, they're simply going to fail.”

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Author:Dale Jamieson
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