Selfishness Quotes - Page 7

When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.

Those are who are selfish are rewarded for being nice. Those who truly care about others feel a smile in return is all the reward they need.

Because of the value placed on individual materialistic success in our society, we are surrounded by people primarily interested in getting something from others. Their attitudes are characterised by selfishness and a lack of empathy for others.

Each one of us is hard at war - within. We must face this battlefield; withdraw, as the psychologist would say, our habitual projections of that strife from the world around us, and realize that we should be so busy killing the selfishness within that we really have not the time, much less the will to blow up our neighbour. And when a few more individuals recognize that the war within implies a friendly tolerance of those about one, and of their ways of living and internal fighting, the Hitlers and Stalins and even the unpleasant fellow next door may provoke in everyman a smile, rather than an H-bomb, or even a bow and arrow.

Christmas Humphreys

Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.

...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.

Everyone wants a piece of you. The trick is what piece to give.

Society nowadays tells people that their happiness is all that matters but happiness is never found if it costs someone else’s theirs. That is not what happiness is, nor would such a person deserve it, because happiness is forged by the setting aside of self and in doing for others to make them happy first and foremost, so if you have to hurt another human being to “find your happiness,” then you have no clue what the word actually means or what it’s willing to do, and in being so self-centered and entitled, it’s veritably tragic that the only care and concern you have is for yourself.

Donna Lynn Hope

Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals.

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

Edward O. Wilson

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strung up by the thumbs, when we hear the ominous shot which marks the end of another victim who has thought to break loose, we may be sure that in another instance life has been misunderstood--we may be sure that society has been struggled against until death alone would stop the individual from contention and evil.

Theodore Dreiser

Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.

Gregory Maguire

Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most parents are not really ‘supportive’ because they want their kid(s) to succeed; they ‘support’ their kid(s) as an attempt to avoid appearing to have bred a failure, or, failures … in the eyes of their peers and/or neighbours.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Parents are programmed to want the best for their kids, regardless of what they get in return. That's what love is supposed to be like, right? But in fact, if you think about it, that's kind of a strange belief. Given what we know about the way people really are. Selfish and shortsighted and egotistical and needy. Why should being a parent, in and of itself, somehow confer superior-personhood on everybody who tries it? Obviously it doesn't.

Jonathan Franzen

When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is "fair". Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being "selfish" and "greedy". Later in life he will thank you.

We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else.

Trevor D. Richardson

...children are at heart selfish, and reasonably so, for they are programmed for survival.

Teach the children compassion and empathy, for all creatures are born selfish.

Is the selfishness of children really so different from our own? During the summer in the country we curse the rain, while the farmers are crying out for it.

Raymond Radiguet

Biology without selfishness, is nothing but fiction.

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.

Ayn Rand

When we're constantly thinking about ourselves, our world shrinks.

Seth Adam Smith

The truth is that, when it comes to sex, selfishness is pretty typical with guys.""Great. How infinitely comfor

A man is not for you when all he knows is to slam your back on the bed and ram into you like a wild fool. The interested ones are the ones so interested that they become very interested in only interesting things about you.

Michael Bassey Johnson

It is a harsh reality that some of the most important and respectable jobs which deserve high salaries might be better off with low salaries. A politician, or a minister, or a teacher is sure to be working sincerely and selflessly for the good of the people when through and through there is little monetary reward guaranteed. This is how the charlatans are weeded out of the field.

It took so long to find you...and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it--I'm old-fashioned. I believe marriage is between a man and a man.

Armistead Maupin

In this age of 'whatever,' Americans are becoming slaves to the new tyranny of nonchalance. " James Morris

The eyes of love have 20/20 vision when focused on another, and become entirely blind when focused on ourselves.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

If there is to be any hope for the world, indeed if you really want to find satisfaction and happiness in your life, you must regard the return you will receive as a secondary consideration, if a consideration at all ……seek money first and you will ruin your land, or betray your profession…

Sir James Darling

Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.

The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. .A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness.' Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one’s audience with one’s mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it—suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what’s selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers’ days by forcing ’em to witness a grotesqueness.

We are selfish, my illness and I. We think only of ourselves. We shape the world around us into messages, into secret whispers spoken only for us.

I don't want the world to keep turning without me on it.

In all honesty, I don’t envy you the possession of this power over memory, nor do I admire you. Because humans are usually completely unconcerned with the memories of other creatures. Human existence involves the willful destruction of the existential memories of other creatures and of your own memories as well. No life can survive without other lives, with the ecological memories of other living creatures have, memories of the environments in which the live. People don’t realize they need to rely on the memories of other organisms to survive. You think that flowers bloom in colorful profusion just to please your eyes. That a wild boar exists just to provide meat for your table. That a fish takes the bait just for you sake. That only you can mourn. That a stone falling into a gorge is of no significance. That a sambar deer, its head bent low to sip at a creek is not a revelation . . . When in fact the finest movement of any organism represents a change in an ecosystem.” The man with the compound eyes takes a deep sign and says: “But if you were any different you wouldn’t be human.

It is not within my power to refuse the journey of life regardless of the nature of my fears or the depth of my selfishness, for the definitions of ‘journey’ and ‘life’ are indistinguishably synonymous. I can however sufficiently inhibit them and amply fight them to the point that I have accepted the journey, but the journey is now solely defined as my effort to forsake the journey.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.

Neither your position in society, nor power, nor dignity, nor selfishness, nor even personal promotion should enslave you

If your heart, mind, and actions are selfish, they will ultimately divide you, others, or entire [establishments]. When motivation is pure and selfless, it will result in helping bring others together.

More often than not, people who are obsessed with their desires and feelings are generally unhappier in life vs. people that refocus their attention on service to others or a righteous cause. Have you ever heard someone say their life sucked because they fed the homeless? Made their children laugh? Or, bought a toy for a needy child at Christmas time?

Shannon L. Alder

You don't build a family by tearing down another one.

Donna Lynn Hope

Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.

THE UNFORGIVENTell me if you've ever had to deal with these kinds of people:The kind who take and don't give.The kind to whom you give and give,And they keep asking.The kind to whom you give and give and they say you gave nothing.The kind whom have never offered anything,But act like they're the ones providingEVERYTHING.The kind you give and give,But take more than you can give.And when they have already taken everything,They get mad at you when you say you haveNothing more to give.The unforgiving,The misgiving,Wastefully living -And selfishly driven.The rat that never gives back,Yet is so quick to attack -Because they think the wordTAKINGSeriously meansGIVING.

When I see an arrogant man, I see one less competitor.

If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.

Shannon L. Alder

There are some for whom the good of mankind is their primary concern, and others who basically put their own considerations before everyone else. I was among the latter.

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

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.

Be willing to give, but only when you aren't expecting anything in return.

*Prostitution* is a euphemism for rape incidents that the victim and the economy profits from.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

DOOR MONEY” To focus on door money means one is paying so much attention to the amount of money they are making at the door they do not consider there is much more profit to be made inside a venue.

In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In many cases, it was the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that fell for her man.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A poetess is not as selfishas you assume.After months of agonising over her marriage of words—the bride—and spaces—the groom,she knows that as soonas she has penned the poem,it’s yours to consume.So, without giving it a think,she blows on the inkand the letters fly awaylike dandelions on a windy day,landing on hands and lips, on hearts and hips.But more often than not,you can easily spotthem trodden and forgotten,becoming sodden and rotten.Yet, she will continue to makewhat’s others to takebecause selfishness is not the mark of a poetess.

Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns.

Nobody knows you as well as our spouse. And that means no one will be quicker to recognize a change when you deliberately start sacrificing your wants and wishes to make sure his or her needs are met.

Stephen Kendrick

Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.

Stephen Kendrick

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run.

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