Selfish Quotes - Page 16

• If you want to design a successful human society you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?

  Frans de Waal

  Successful, Animal, Design

  "Frans de Waal on Political Apes, Science Communication, and Building a Cooperative Society". Interview with Eric Michael Johnson, blogs.scientificamerican.com. July 11, 2011.

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• Human beings are selfish by nature. Everything that happens to a child, you immediately grab your own child and say, "I will never let that happen to you."

  John Darnielle

  Children, Humans, Happens

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I don't see anything wrong with telling someone that you are selfish with their love and that you can't stand sharing them with anyone else.

  Vic Fuentes

  Source: puregrainaudio.com

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• ...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Eye, Ears

  William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Michael Mason (2007). “Lyrical Ballads”, p.367, Pearson Education

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• The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Spiritual, Attachment, Action

  Eknath Easwaran (2000). “A More Ardent Fire”, p.111, Nilgiri Press

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• In the final analysis our greatest problem with holiness is not that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are rebellious. We are selfish , that's our problem. And the fact that we often won't admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes.

  Floyd McClung

  Heart, Pride, Analysis

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• I think its really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so its good to see people in the media representing all of those things.

  Kerry Bishe

  Thinking, Media, People

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• Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.

  George Eliot

  Science, Obligation, Company

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.483, Penguin

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• Evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Evil, Behavior, Riddle

  "Crime and Punishment". www.nytimes.com. September 19, 1999.

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• I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Music, Writing, Wish

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

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• By nice women . . . you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care.

  Nellie L. McClung

  Nice, Women, Mean

  Nellie L. McClung (1915). “In Times Like These”, p.10, University of Toronto Press

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• It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish.

  Ralph Waldo Trine

  Wise, People, Ignorant

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• To be selfish is to sacrifice the nobler for the meaner ends, and to be sordidly content.

  Hugh Reginald Haweis

  Sacrifice, Ends, Selfishness

  Hugh Reginald Haweis (1875). “Speech in Season”, p.307

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• The nicest people fall in love indiscriminately ... while under the influence of that pre-eminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous demands upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need.

  Margery Allingham

  Falling In Love, People, Demand

  Margery Allingham (1959). “Crime and Mr. Campion”

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• That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us.

  Margaret Cho

  Opportunity, Journey, Giving

  Margaret Cho (2006). “I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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• You're either selfish, or you're a servant...but fundamentally selfish people are terrible friends, terrible lovers, terrible spouses, terrible Christians, terrible parents. They leave a terrible legacy. Will you be selfish? Will you be a servant?...A good marriage is a servant and a servant.

  Mark Driscoll

  Christian, People, Parent

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• But have you never noticed that when one has been trying to do something really good one is much nearer committing some special sin than when one keeps on in the selfish, matter-of-fact prudence of minding one's own business, and that alone?

  Geraldine Jewsbury

  Special, Trying, Matter

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• People of delicate health, selfish dispositions, and coarse minds, can always bear the sufferings of others placidly.

  Isabel Burton

  Suffering Of Others, People, Mind

  Lady Isabel Burton (1875). “The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land: From My Private Journal”, p.262

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• Since the real purpose of meditation is to increase our capacity to help others, taking time each day to meditate is not selfish. We have to manage our time and energy in such a way that we can be of maximum benefit to others, and to do this we need time alone to recover our strength, collect our thoughts, and see things in perspective

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

  Strength, Time, Real

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (2011). “Eight Steps to Happiness: The Buddhist Way of Loving Kindness”, p.213, Tharpa Publications US

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• Mr. Lincoln was generous by nature, and though his whole heart was in the war, he could not but respect the valor of those opposed to him. His soul was too great for the narrow, selfish views of partisanship. Brave by nature himself, he honored bravery in others, even his foes.

  Elizabeth Keckley

  War, Heart, Views

  Elizabeth Keckley (2016). “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”, p.60, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Sensual, Honor, Philosopher

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• Now I had lived long enough and had heard enough from urchins my age and from other slaves, to distrust the person who calls himself merciful, or just, or kindly. Usually these are the most cruel, niggardly and selfish people, and slaves learn to fear the master who prefaces his remarks with tributes to his own virtues.

  Elizabeth Borton de Trevino

  People, Hypocrisy, Long

  Elizabeth Borton de Treviño (1999). “I, Juan De Pareja”, Turtleback Books

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• The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

  Herbert Simon

  Intelligent, Individual, Unintelligent

  Herbert Alexander Simon (1997). “Models of Bounded Rationality: Empirically grounded economic reason”

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• People are just self-centered-it's all about them. And we're telling people it's okay to be 'all about you' because you're a victim and it's not your fault. That's why society has gotten more and more belligerent and selfish.

  Jim Norton

  People, Faults, Self Centered

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• The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the
  selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the
  unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Wise, Appreciation, Kids

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.82, Faber & Faber

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