#selfishness

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#makes #people #selfish #selfishness

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S. ↗

— James K. Polk

#any #became #before #conception #congress

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

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

Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#sympathy #beauty

Bravery is not an act of intelligence; it is just selfishness and stupidity. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#intelligence #selfishness #stupidity #intelligence

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern. ↗

— Herman E. Daly

#morality #selfishness #life

You selfish bitch!" She had known for a long time that putting her needs above those of Adam's wife and children was indeed selfish. She had no real answer to the accusation thrown at her. "I'm sorry" she said, with her head in her hands. "you're sorry?" came her adversary's disbelieving reply. "I am. I'm sorry he married you when he was in love with me. I'm sorry I couldn't have loved someone else. I'm sorry your marriage is a joke and I'm sorry that I'm alone. I'm sorry for a lot of things - for you, for your kids, for me and for him. I spend most of my time being sorry." For a moment there was silence at the end of the line. "all you had to do was stay away" "if only I could have." tears escaped and raced down her cheeks. "I hate you! ↗

— Anna McPartlin

#heartbreak #lost-love #selfishness #love

God comes right out and tells us why he gives us more money than we need. It's not so we can find more ways to spend it. It's not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It's not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God's provision. It's so we can give and give generously (2 Corinthians 8:14; 9:11) ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#excess #generosity #giving #less #money