#selfishness

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#philosophy #selfishness #progress

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#creative #darkness #decide #destructive #every

Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#government #greed #national-troubles #problems #problems-in-the-world

Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#makes #people #selfish #selfishness

...selflessness and bravery aren’t all that different. All your life you’ve been training to forget yourself, so when you’re in danger, it becomes your first instinct. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#instinct #selfishness #life

Boredom is for the selfish. ↗

— Patti Digh

#boredom-and-attitude #keep-learning #moving-forward #selfishness #attitude

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#cruelty #ethics #ethics-in-religion #morality #morality-without-religion

We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet -- our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire. ↗

— Nancy Pearcey

#fear #selfishness #death

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self. ↗

— Criss Jami

#barricade #coward #cowardice #desert #ego

Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects. ↗

— William Wilberforce

#sin #nature