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Selfishness Quotes

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Selfishness Quotes

“The truth is, I do have a chance to fight for something in the place I came from. Something akin to what I continue to fight and hope for in America. Something bigger than myself. And yet, I stay. It's a decision I continue to make, one that continues to haunt me. And even if it is a choice, there's no weight in it. It's meaningless apart from selfish intent.”

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Book:Socialist Realism
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“When, grown older, we look back on the selfishness of the people who’ve been mixed up with our lives, we see it undeniably for what it was, as hard as steel or platinum and a lot more durable than time itself. As long as we’re young, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the score, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you’ve come to. There’s no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you’ve lived this long, it’s because you’ve squashed any poetry you had in you. Life is keeping body and soul together.”

LifeSoulAgeCrueltySelfishnessIndifferenceCunningMalice
Book:Journey to the End of the Night
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“It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.”

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Book:Killosophy
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“One reason that a truth and reconciliation process is needed for group selection is to return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwin’s solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology“: Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”

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Author:David Sloan Wilson
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“In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool.”

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Author:Derek R. Audette
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“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

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Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
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“It's a mistake to expect benefits from any pose. Expectations make you restless because if you fail to get what you expect, you feel miserable. Yoga practice is an act of adoration to the Lord. You do it because it has to be done. If you have this mental attitude, your selfishness disappears and the benefits come.”

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Author:Dharma Mittra
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“Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.”

IfsMenCountryBeautifulHalfGreedOur CountrySelfishnessCharmWildernessRecklessWild ThingsExterminationShort SightedWildlife Conservation
Book:The Green Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt in Appreciation of Wilderness, Wildlife, and Wild Places
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“One of the fundamental demonstrations of our natural instinct to Bond with each other is a will to give. Rather than domination, our most basic urge is to reach out to another human being, even at a cost to ourselves. Giving to others-the urge to empathize, to be compassionate, and to help others altruistically-is not the exception to the rule, but our natural state of being. Our impulse to connect with each other has developed an automatic desire to do for others, even at personal cost. Altruism comes naturally to us. It is selfishness that is culturally conditioned and a sign of pathology.”

InspirationalGivingHumansStatesHelpingDesireNaturalHuman BeingsCostFundamentalsInstinctHelping OthersSelfishnessImpulseExceptionUrgesCompassionateReach OutAltruismDominationDemonstrationPathologyGiving To OthersNatural InstinctSelf GivingException To The Rule
Author:Lynne McTaggart
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“I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.”

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Book:Secret Power
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“Next to the ministry I know of no more noble profession than the law. The object aimed at is justice, equal and exact, and if it does not reach that end at once it is because the stream is diverted by selfishness or checked by ignorance. Its principles ennoble and its practice elevates.”

IfsKnowsDoeEndsLawNextJusticePrinciplesPracticeObjectsIgnoranceEqualNobleProfessionSelfishnessStreamsMinistryNoble Profession
Book:The Life and Speeches of Hon. Wm. Jennings Bryan
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“If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. It has intrinsic and indestructible merits. It holds the welfare of mankind in its embrace, as the protecting arms of a mother hold her infant to her bosom. The very ignorance and selfishness which obstructs its path are the strongest arguments for its promotion, for it furnishes the only adequate means for their removal.”

IfsHumansHeartMeanMotherCausesEducationPathSacrificeMankindIgnoranceArmsArgumentEmbraceEndureWorthySelfishnessWelfareMeritStrongestToilHuman HeartInfantAdequatePromotionBosomsRemovalIndestructibleAdequate Means
Book:Thoughts
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“So, let us, you and I, for the sake of our brother man, individually strive by example and influence to lift the standard of thought and conduct from the low level of selfishness and self-indulgence up to the lofty realms of aspirational thought and self-denial.”

MenInspirationalSelfLevelsInfluenceExampleBrotherLowsStandardsStriveSakeSelfishDenialSelfishnessLiftsRealmsAspirationIndulgeIndulgenceLiftingLoftySelf-denialSelf IndulgenceLow LevelRational ThoughtSelfish PeopleStrivers
Author:Ossian Everett Mills
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“Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined - even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness - to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.”

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Book:The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
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“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that -- softly, without props.”

PeopleKnowsWorldLoveKindStillsRealCertainSexImaginationLossWalksCuttingMagicCoupleBenefitsStandingLeavingBlowSelfishnessChairsLeapInfatuationClownTremblingPropsMansionsSwampsStanding There
Author:Toni Morrison
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“All of us, single or married, are eternally part of some family-someway, somewhere, somehow-and much of our joy in life comes as we correctly recognize and properly develop those family relationships. We come to this earth charged with a mission: to learn to love and serve one another. To best help us accomplish this, God has placed us in families, for he knows that is where we can best learn to overcome selfishness and pride and to sacrifice for others and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility and love the very essence of our character.”

KnowsCharacterHelpingEarthJoySacrificeHumilityPrideMarriedEssenceAnd LoveOvercomingAccomplishMissionsSelfishnessSacrifice For OthersHelpfulnessFamily RelationshipSelfishness And Pride
Author:John H. Groberg
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