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Quotes About Selfishness

She has form, he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.
~ Oscar Wilde
He was a man, in short, who had arranged his own life to live comfortably, selfishly, and well on the personal side, so that he could give generously and impartially of his talens on the official side.
~ Cordwainer Smith
Wir sind alle Lügner, wenn es uns nützt.
~ Cornelia Funke
We're not making a world without greed, Jacob. We're making a world where greed is a perversion. Where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing yourself with shit: gross. Wrong. Our winning doesn't mean you don't get to be greedy. It means people will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. You can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it.
~ Cory Doctorow
I don't think that the average person is sixty percent good and forty percent prick. I think that the average person sometimes kids himself that he's the center of the universe, and it's okay if he does something that he'd be pissed about if someone else did it to him, and tries not to think about it too hard.
~ Cory Doctorow
Once you've been a shotgun person for a while, it's hard to imagine anything else, and you start using stupid terms like 'human nature' to describe it. If being a selfish, untrusting asshole is human nature, then how do we form friendships? Where do families come from?
~ Cory Doctorow
We are all worth something, she said. Zottas are not worth more than the rest of us. Self-Deception makes us into monsters. Selfishness is an excuse to busy your empathy. People are basically good. Live as though it was the first days of a better [nation].
~ Cory Doctorow
When I forget to do the dishes, that's because no one's perfect. When you forget to do the dishes, it's because you're a selfish asshole.
~ Cory Doctorow
Our thoughts are either focused on what's eternal, life-changing, and true, or lost in the details of our temporary, selfish, false beliefs.
~ Craig Groeschel
Poor Melody, he thought again, because she saw love as something that gets you what you want. She didn't understand at all.
~ Cynthia Voigt
Beneath this mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivilous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit ridden, I let it reform.
~ Cyril Connolly
I'm tired of self-important mentalities
~ D H Lawrence
?tii care-i problema ta cu toat? lumea, cu mine, cu tine, cu fiecare, inclusiv Op? Un egoism steril È™i st?tut care ne separ? de tot È™i de toate. Nu-i egocentrism. Egocentrismul reprezint? înc? un fel de instinct. E un egoism meschin, total È™i autoritar.
~ D. H. Lawrence
It's not art for art's sake, it's art for my sake.
~ D.H. Lawrence
You say, Don't you bother about me, and then all the while you feel injured because nobody thinks of you.
~ D.H. Lawrence
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
~ Dale Carnegie
In it he argued that unrestrained capitalism produced great disparities of wealth, cycles of boom and depression, and festering levels of unemployment. The system encouraged selfishness instead of cooperation, and acquiring wealth rather than serving others. People were educated for careers rather than for a love of work and creativity. And political parties became corrupted by political contributions from owners of great capital.
~ Walter Isaacson
The world needed to suffer in order to understand the simplest of universal principles, the unity of man with man and with God. The world of men had to reap the harvest of its seeds of hate, selfishness and greed it had been sowing for centuries. It had to reap this harvest in order to learn that universal law is inevitable and inescapable.
~ Walter Russell
The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored , and unsung. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
~ Walter Scott
cared for no rogues but their own
~ Walter Scott
But purity of heart isn't limited to matters of sex. It's about not letting lesser loves or sins distract us from the Lord. We need to guard our hearts not just against lust and pornography, but also against gossip, anger, pride, greed, and selfishness. This keeps us on a path to God with his grace, and it leads us to the joy of one day seeing him.
~ Charles J. Chaput
The irony is, if we divide ourselves for our own comfort, no one will have comfort.
~ Charles J. Shields
If you want to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.
~ Charles Kingsley
Obsession with self is the motif of our time.
~ Charles Krauthammer