Quotes About Selfishness

More often than not, it's disrespectful to them (our children) - and disrespectful to their struggle with their tasks in life- if our own anxiety as parents makes us cling to our children. It's disrespectful is we demand more intimacy than they are willing or able to give. Too much involvement with our children is not an act of love- it's an act of selfishness.

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I used to think you had to be very selfish, but as I get older my views on life change.

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.

I've never really understood the criticism that climbing is inherently selfish, since it could equally be argued about virtually any other hobby or sport. Is gardening selfish?

Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

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

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

People are more interested in being visible than they are in loving other people.

What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love? And why do we become such jerks when we do? We've all been there. You want something, you possess it - and by possessing it, you lose it.

Zo ging het leven onafgebroken en eentonig voort, als met een zenuwachtig egoïstisch materialisme: er werd geleden en er daalde geen algemeen rouwfloers neer op de wereld; er werd geleden en toch bleef alles het zelfde en lachte men, sliep men, at men rondom dat leed.

Individuals had never much cared what had happened in the past, or would happen in the future, or how much others of their kind suffered or lacked. They did not care how many others died providing they lived. And government, to those who did not govern, had been largely a matter of indifference unless it happened to have a detrimental effect on the lives of individuals. Then, maybe, if the individuals had felt strongly enough, they had held protests, gone on strike, or started revolutions.

Entitlement was, she knew, a terrible thing. It chained the person to their victimhood. It gobbled up all the air around it. Until the person lived in a vacuum, where nothing good could flourish.

What's the use of healing, if the life that's saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There's a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.

He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will, although operated by an intermediary, an amanuensis. He wants a dictator made in his own image.

Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness.

People are just greedy animals, after all.

A friend who has the belief system that says, It's everyone for himself in this world will always instinctively place himself before others, devalue people, mistreat and even abuse the very best friends who sincerely love him.

I am well aware of what I expected, what I expect, of my daughter, and of the selfishness and pathos of that expectation. Much is demanded of the dilettante's offspring. She will do what I could not, and be a great scholar, if I have any say in the matter, and I have.

the usual nonsense that people who know nothing about anything, like me, say when they don't want their own days to be ruined by worrying about others.