Famous Quotes & Sayings

Richard Dawkins

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Richard Dawkins

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Rose Macaulay

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

William Jennings Bryan

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

Woodrow Wilson

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

Woodrow Wilson

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

William Nicholson

Here I am going to say something which may come as a bit of a shock. God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them.

Sarah Addison Allen

We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Deliberately seeking solitude-quality time spent away from family and friends-may seem selfish. It is not. Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.

William Faulkner

When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.

River Phoenix

We take these animals and completely violate who they are. We use them, abuse them, and deprive them all their lives…then we cut their throats, shred them and eat them! Morally, I’m against it, ethically, I can’t justify it, and ecologically, it’s just insane. The thought of meat-eating makes me shudder. As far as wearing fur is concerned, it is the rudest, most inconsiderate, selfish and sick façade I can imagine.

Richard Pryor

Sure, I have friends, plenty of friends, and they all come around wantin' to borrow money. I've always been generous with my friends and family, with money, but selfish with the important stuff like love.

Tupac Shakur

We look at death from the selfish side, like: "That guy died. Oh, it's so sad." Why is it sad? He's away from all of this bad stuff that's here on Earth. I mean, at the worst, he's just somewhere quiet, no nothing. At best, he's an angel... or he's a spirit somewhere. What is so bad about that?

Tracy McGrady

There's nothing about me that's selfish.

Richard Dawkins

Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Richard Dawkins

Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way.

Richard Dawkins

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

Richard Dawkins

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Sarah Mlynowski

Why do you think people cheat?," I asked. "Because they're bored? Because they can? Because they're selfish and think they're entitled to anything they want? Because they don't think they'll get caught?

Sarah MacLean

Love isn't one-sided and selfish.It is full and generous and life-altering in the best of ways.Love does not destroy, Gabriel.It creates.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

Wayne Dyer

You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract.

Samuel L. Jackson

The [Oregon] Journal in its head and heart will stand for the people, be truly Democratic and free from political entanglements and machinations, believing in the principles that promise the greatest good to the greatest number-to ALL MEN, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude... It will be a fair newspaper, not a dull and selfish sheet...

W. H. Auden

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

William Clark

Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.

Wayne Dyer

We must honor our worthiness in order to receive what we want. In our society we are conditioned to believe that we are not worthy, and that it is even selfish to want to be able to attract things into our lives.

Robertson Davies

The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I am selfish, but that's an attribute that all artists possess.

Walt Disney

The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements, but rather with the things we do for others

Saul Bellow

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.