Quotes About Altruism

If you're asked, you've got to serve - put aside any reservations based on campaign rhetoric... and figure out what's best for the country.

Charity never lacks what is her own, all that she needs for her own security. Not alone does she have it, she abounds with it. She wants this abundance for herself that she may share it with all; and she reserves enough for herself so that she disappoints nobody. For charity is perfect only when full.

I believe that everyone, regardless of who they are, should do something that is greater than themselves. Whether it's adoption, or helping people who are sick or poor, or whatever. That's what God put us on this earth to do.

I think if I have learned one thing from all of my family members, both sides of it - my mom's side, my dad's side and everyone else - it's that every one of us has a responsibility to do what we can to contribute back and make our communities and our country a better place.

To lose yourself in righteous service to others can lift your sights and get your mind off personal problems, or at least put them in proper focus.

Travis Alexander was a good guy. Was he a saint? No. But he was somebody who was really, really invested in helping other people and making this world a better place. Everything he did, even the car he drove, was a sign of him trying to be a force for good in this world.

I was brought up Catholic, and even as a little girl I was affected by the idea of giving back - doing something for the needy, something of significance.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

The purpose of life is to help others, and if you can't help them, won't you at least not hurt them? I know that is a platitude, that that is sentimental and can easily be attacked. But loving, caring is simple, and we make it complex. Our own neuroses make it complex.

The simple act of caring is heroic.

I just want people to realize that it doesn't take much to be a good person. Simple things is all it takes.

When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life's preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

swear to you, friends, by all the gods, he seems to me happier in doing us kindnesses than in enriching himself.

We could go to the extreme of giving away everything we have to feed, clothe, and house the poor, or we could sacrifice ourselves in the most heroic of ways, even our body or our life, but if we don't do those things out of a heart of pure love, they won't profit us in any way (1 Corinthians 13:3). Love is what gives meaning to all that we do.

I wondered if I'd ever be nice enough to volunteer for anything. I was hoping not.

If you just stick your big toe in the water when it comes to helping someone else, you'll get one big toe's worth of life change.

Make the world better. Take the meanness out of people's hearts.

It does the world no good to return evil for evil. I try now to return good to them instead.

Indeed, love is everything.

Though I have all knowledge and all faith, and have not charity, I am nothing.

May Sarton novel, The Reckoning, Ella writes to her friend Laura, "Do you suppose growing up always means diluting [our] fierce purpose for the sake of others?"4

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

What good are kindness, self-sacrifice, energy, and a sense of responsibility if they are so jealously guarded that only one's brothers and sisters may benefit from them? —Melita Maschmann