Quotes and Sayings about Selfishness
"Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully."
- Richard Bach
(Related: Honesty, Conscience, Measure, Selfishness)
"Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness."
- Honore De Balzac
(Related: Courtesy, Selfishness)
"Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Society, Effort, Law, Liberty, Man, Selfishness)
"Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Selfishness, Vice, Will)
"Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible."
- Elizabeth Bowen
(Related: Hope, Pity, Selfishness)
"We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Folly, Language, Selfishness, Sense, Tyranny, Violence)
"All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Related: Sympathy, Virtue, Selfishness)
"Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Nothing, Selfishness)
"Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion."
- John Comenius
(Related: Religion, Consideration, End, Humanity, Language, Nationality, Selfishness, Welfare)
"As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel."
- Rick Danko
(Related: Time, Dream, American, Being, Greed, Selfishness)
"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."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Conservative, Justification, Man, Philosophy, Selfishness)
"Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race."
- William E. Gladstone
(Related: Race, Selfishness)
"Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Egotism, Evil, Ignorance, Man, Selfishness, Will)
"There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through."
- John Gunther
(Related: Politics, American, Selfishness)
"Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
(Related: Love, Selfishness)
"Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness."
- Napoleon Hill
(Related: Sacrifice, Achievement, Result, Selfishness)
"Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it."
- Douglas Horton
(Related: Act, Being, Selfishness, Value)
"It may be a cold, clammy thing to say, but those that treat friendship the same as any other selfishness seem to get the most out of it."
- Edgar Watson Howe
(Related: Friendship, May, Selfishness)
"How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness."
- Alice James
(Related: Being, Respect, Selfishness)
"What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
(Related: Politics, People, Distrust, Party, President, Selfishness, Suspicion, United, Will)
"Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Parents, Selfishness, Slavery, Tyranny)
"As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision."
- Helen Keller
(Related: Love, Vision, Complaint, Joy, Mind, Selfishness)
"Let us reject violence and selfishness which could destroy our country's unity."
- Mwai Kibaki
(Related: Country, Selfishness, Unity, Violence)
"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Altruism, Darkness, Light, Man, Selfishness, Will)
"The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Mother, Children, Motherhood, State, Universe)
"This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural."
- Jessica Lange
(Related: Idea, Virtue, Selfishness)
"The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few."
- John L. Lewis
(Related: Greed, Neglect, Resentment, Selfishness)
"Yes, forget your weakness, whatever that weakness may be. It is egotism, it is selfishness after. all, for it is a dwelling on self. Forget your weakness; and remember your strength."
- Joseph Barber Lightfoot
(Related: Strength, Egotism, Forget, May, Self, Selfishness, Weakness)
"Modesty and unselfishness - these are the virtues which men praise - and pass by."
- Andre Maurois
(Related: Men, Modesty, Praise)
"My desire for the part of Mammy was not dominated by selfishness for Hollywood has been good to me and I am grateful."
- Hattie McDaniel
(Related: Desire, Hollywood, Selfishness)
"The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity."
- David O. McKay
(Related: Bigotry, Darkness, Hatred, Humanity, Malice, Night, Selfishness, Sun)
"If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears."
- Cesare Pavese
(Related: Travel, Light, Selfishness)
"There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S."
- James K. Polk
(Related: Congress, President, Selfishness)
"Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
(Related: Religion, Atheism, Selfishness)
"Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice."
- Elihu Root
(Related: Nature, Control, Ambition, Generations, Human nature, Injustice, Now, Perfection, Prejudice, Selfishness, Will)
"A wise unselfishness is not a surrender of yourself to the wishes of anyone, but only to the best discoverable course of action."
- David Seabury
(Related: Action, Surrender, Wishes)
"I want some day to be able to love with the same intensity and unselfishness that parents love their children with."
- Shakira
(Related: Love, Children, Day, Parents, Want)
"Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Religion, Selfishness)
"To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature."
- Adam Smith
(Related: Nature, Exercise, Human nature, Perfection, Selfishness)
"Our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express."
- George A. Smith
(Related: Power, Habit, Conscience, Deeds, Enemies, Evil, Malice, Memories, Past, Pride, Selfishness)
"Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak."
- Madame de Stael
(Related: Men, Women, Selfishness)
"Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual."
- William Graham Sumner
(Related: Men, Financial, Connection, Fraud, Greed, Selfishness)
"Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity."
- William Howard Taft
(Related: Effort, Labor, Motive, Selfishness, Socialism, Today)
"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: Selfishness, Simplicity)
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Living, Selfishness, Wishes)
"Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness."
- Woodrow Wilson
(Related: Caution, Selfishness)
"There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you."
- Paramahansa Yogananda
(Related: Heart, First, Friends, Thinking, Will)
"Selfishness is the only real atheism; unselfishness the only real religion."
- Israel Zangwill
(Related: Religion, Atheism, Selfishness)
"I was surprised by how much I like being a father; surprised at what a decent father I am, because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to dump my selfishness."
- Michael Zaslow
(Related: Father, Being, Selfishness)