Quotes About Altruism

Together with the works of mercy, feeding, sheltering, and clothing our brothers, we must indoctrinate.

She lived in a world which she could make perfect for those she loved and in which her own comfort and happiness mattered not at all.

Maybe, she thought, this experience would be good. It would probably be improving to focus on the problems of others for a change.

The trouble with human beings is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they don't love others enough. The End of Anthropocentrism?

Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.

We abide the surgeon's scalpel to save our own lives, our loved ones' lives, but not to save a stranger's life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you'd call her.

Live, and be happy, and make others so.

There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.

The hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.

I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings

We have one unerring guide...Call it love, charity, or sympathy; it is the best, the angelic portion of us. It teaches us to feel pain at others pain, joy in their joy. The more entirely we mingle our emotions with those of others, making our well or ill being depend on theirs, the more completely do we cast away our selfishness, and approach the perfection of our nature.

It did not occur to them to refuse. They knew that if you find some person or creature in desperate need of help which you can supply you have a human duty to supply it, even if it could inconvenience or even hurt you to do so. This, after all, is how the greatest and best deeds in the world have been done, and though the children did not say this aloud, they knew it inside themselves without even thinking about it.

almost all biologists agreed that no creature could ever evolve the ability to help its species at the expense of itself. Only when the two interests coincided would it act selflessly.

This isn't about auctions,' said Meg Whitman, the chief executive of eBay, 'in fact it's not about economic warfare. It's the opposite.' It was survival of the nicest.

Smith went one step further, and suggested that morality emerged unbidden and unplanned from a peculiar feature of human nature: sympathy.

we all enjoy making other people happy. How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, but the pleasure of seeing it.

if sympathy allows you to please yourself by pleasing others, are you being selfish or altruistic?

The argument is not that exchange teaches people to be kind; it is that exchange teaches people to recognise their enlightened self-interest lies in seeking cooperation.

Richard Dawkins that 'money is a formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism' –

We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I do not know.

I don't save the world for glory or power. I have neither and I don't care for them. In fact, I quite like it that the world doesn't know my name. I just do what I do for the people I love.

Being altruistic not only helps us to benefit others, but it is also the most satisfying way to live.

Voluntary simplicity is at once joyous and altruistic. Joyous because it is not permanently plagued by the hunger for "more"; altruistic because it does not encourage the disproportionate concentration of resources in the hands of a few, resources which—were they to be spread evenly—would significantly improve the lives of those deprived of basic needs.

Some people might think that the smartest way to guarantee their own well-being is to isolate themselves from others and to work hard at their own happiness, without consideration for what other people are experiencing. They probably assume that if everybody did that, we'd all be happy. But the result would be exactly the opposite: instead of being happy, they would be torn between hope and fear, make their own lives miserable, and ruin the lives of the people around them too.