Famous Quotes & Sayings

George Ade

Do not give alms promiscuously. Select the unworthy poor and make them happy. To give to the deserving is a duty, but to help the improvident, drinking class is clear generosity, so that the donor has a right to be warmed by a selfish pride and count on a most flattering obituary.

Hippolyte Taine

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

Henry Rollins

All of the things that the bible warns you of being: jealous, covetous, murderous, selfish, etc., that's kind of how humans are.

Henry Ward Beecher

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

Henry Ward Beecher

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.

Henry Ward Beecher

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

Henry Ward Beecher

When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; Influences circle him on all sides, and yet must he answer for his actions: For the being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will, But a slave to selfish passions is the wavering creature of circumstance.

Nicole Scherzinger

If believing in yourself and going after what you want in life and realising your worth is ruthless and selfish, then I'm definitely ruthless and selfish.

Mother Teresa

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

Mother Teresa

It is easy to be proud & harsh & selfish - so easy. But we have been created for better things.

Mother Teresa

People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway.

Peace Pilgrim

You have endless energy only when you are working for the good of the whole - you have to stop working for your little selfish interests. That's the secret of it. In this world you are given as you give.

John Muir

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!

John von Neumann

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

Mortimer Adler

We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.

Mortimer Adler

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.

Edward Albert

Sometimes you have to be selfish to be selfless.

Laurence Sterne

There are some tempers--how shall I describe them--formed either of such impenetrable matter, or wrought up by habitual selfishness to such an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature, or had no lot or connection at all with the species.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A point has been reached where the peoples of the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill-will, of marked trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening tempers--a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war.... Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We know that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private axe to grind.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.

Lord Byron

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.

Malcolm Muggeridge

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

Mahatma Gandhi

Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money.

Mahatma Gandhi

A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution.

John C. Maxwell

If the church is going to make a difference, it will need to go through the "big give-up" stage. Churches will need to quit being selfish and become relevant.

Matt Diaz

I just try to find ways to love the people that I'm around. It's hard sometimes because I'm selfish and I want to focus inwardly but when I can fight against that and look at other people's needs, it's really a stark contrast to what people are used to in such a selfish environment.

Max Stirner

No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

Pat Riley

The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish.

Phil Jones

If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.

Kelley Armstrong

Maybe I'm being selfish, but I choose you." He leaned over, lips brushing mine as he whispered, "I always choose you.

Napoleon Hill

Experience is an asset of which no worker can be cheated, no matter how selfish or greedy his immediate employer may be.