Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Selfishness Quotes

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. 

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 

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. 
Napoleon Hill 

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. 
Oscar Wilde 

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. 
Helen Keller 

Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it. 
Douglas Horton 

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 

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. 
Richard Bach 

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears. 
Cesare Pavese 

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness. 
Honore De Balzac 

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure. 
Jane Austen 

Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness. 
Alveda King 

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 

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion. 
Franklin D. Roosevelt 

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty. 
Henry Ward Beecher 

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. 
Lao Tzu 

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself. 
Henry Ward Beecher 

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness. 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race. 
William E. Gladstone 

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


Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing. 
Charles Caleb Colton 

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery. 
Franz Kafka 

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness. 
Woodrow Wilson 

I am confident that nobody... will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself. 
Nelson Mandela 

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance. 
Graham Greene 

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley 

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 

I think that in today's world, by nature, we are all self-centered. And that often leads to selfishness. 
Gary Chapman 

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak. 
Madame de Stael 

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. 
E. W. Howe 

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 

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible. 
Elizabeth Bowen 

This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural. 
Jessica Lange 

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 

Selfishness is the only real atheism; unselfishness the only real religion. 
Israel Zangwill 

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 

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 

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 

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


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 

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 

As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice. 
Anthony Kiedis 

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 

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 

Let us reject violence and selfishness which could destroy our country's unity. 
Mwai Kibaki 

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 

There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through. 
John Gunther 

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

No comments:

Post a Comment