Best 236 quotes in «altruism quotes» category

You are your own nearest environment, so begin with yourself.

You see, it’s about empathy. It’s not about you. It’s about empathy. It’s not even about caring or being kind. It’s about empathy. Do you think that all people who can empathize with other people (and rocks and trees), are desirous of being kind, at all times? Of course not! Empathy often hurts, and is often difficult. But we experience this difficulty, because we are human beings, because human beings are designed to connect with other living and non-living things!

You will achieve what you want to achieve, only if you can cope with the theory of altruism.

You’re not exactly up for the Humanitarian of the Year award, so save your altruism for someone who can't see through you like cellophane.

Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

Altruism is the best source of happiness. There is no doubt about that.

An enemy is anyone who tells the truth about you.

Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

Effective altruism is the form of altruism in which we bring our rational capacities to bear in order to do the most good that we can.

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocite, flatterer.

The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.

The altruism of foresters can serve as a motto for humanity in general: "We reap what we have not sown. We sow what we do not reap.

Heck, what's a little extortion among friends?

A difference is between altruism and egoism.

Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

A humanitarian seldom makes a good lover. For a lover’s world revolves around their lover, while a humanitarian’s world revolves around the world.

...A canonical leader is someone whose exemplary rule might have appeared to be for the alleviation of the pains and miseries of a particular group, but which in reality is for the advancement of humanism...

...A legendary leader distinguishes himself as someone who gets ahead of his people from an impasse and futile general consensus, and then finds new grounds that constitute the base from which a unique course of his people’s destiny is charted...

All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar.

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.

Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man's life and work belong to the state - to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation - and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

Altruism and selfishness are also entitled to a rendezvous.

Although people sometimes assume that the happy are self-absorbed and complacent, just the opposite is true. In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water.

Altruism is not the product of religion, it precedes religion, and often times religion is its enemy.

And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is no secret that many people here think that you are a communist.' Rasheed reflected that this probably meant only that he loathed the poverty and injustice endemic to the village, and that he made no particular secret of it.

A nationalist will blindly follow his country to his death out of love for it. A patriot will stand up for and even against his country to his death out of love for it.

A thousand years from now nobody is going to know that you or I ever lived. The cynic is right, but lazy. He says ‘You live, you die and nothing you do will ever make a difference.’ But as long as I live, I’m going to be like Beethoven and shake my fist at fate and try to do something for those who live here now and who knows how far into the future that will go. If I accomplish nothing more than making my arm sore, at least I will be satisfied that I have lived.

At the end of the day, what matters is our faith in humanity...

A man who does not honor the company of his true friends will never see the light of true love.

At what point is normal natural?

Avoid people who hurt from an impulse. I mean people who have this tendency to relish their capacity to hurt the good souls of this world, and who after hurting, wake up the next day without a trace of despondent brooding, and then move on with life never thinking that they should show some remorse or try to repent.

[A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on “Not everyone, just me!” falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that “here,” the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe.

...Bad leaders are known to destroy one, more or even all of the foundations of their people’s way of life...

…a writer, like most artists, needs a partner who can act as the fuel to his artistic mind and soul, yet has the great ability to sober him up and help him be in sync with the non-artistic part of his soul.

A writer needs a partner who can act as fuel to his artistic mind, yet has the great ability to sober him up and help him be in sync with the non-artistic part of his soul.

A yesterday missed can never be found even in a fine tomorrow.

Sounds Is Love of All, the World Sounds create soulful existence, When the oceans tide, it is sound; When fervency of love creates sympathy of sobbing, sighing, jubilating, and tears drops, it’s a hymn of sound and presence. When rains, it creates symphonies that therapeutic the body and mind, it is sound. There is sound. When sharing a glass of wine while looking at your significant other swallow its taste, There is sound. When night becomes morning, noise of the birds tweak, the dogs bark, pancakes sizzling on the pan, bees gathering for honey, it is sound. There is sound. When listening to music for a moodily Spirit, moving rhythmically to the music, it is sound. When coitus makes quakes, it is sound. In durations of lovemaking; the breathing, the objects banging, the thrusting, and the instrumental tones from the mouth, the kisses, the clapping and rubbing of flesh, it all surrounds the atmosphere, it is sound. There is sound. When love cuddles in your significant other sleeps, and hear breathing, heart beats, maneuvering, it is sound. There is sound. During intensity of love at its silence and loudest, there is sound. As penetration of love goes deep and pulls out a sound of intensity opens and reactions follow, it is sound. There is sound. Beauty is the penetrating sound of the verses, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, and overall the Holy Scriptures spoken from a fervent tongue, power of thought, and sensible recovery from what aches, in all its sound. Sound surrounds all ways. It is sound. Sound is therapy to the love and Spirit, a sound mind, in all, the world is sound.

Change requires sacrifice of the self, which by itself is the fulfillment of the self to the being truly desiring for that change to become a reality in the world, but to all others this fulfillment would only appear to be either altruism or self-denial.

Compassion dervies from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning "to suffer, undergo or experience." So "compassion" means "to endure [something] with another person," to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view. That is why our hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.

Compassion is a function of strength.

Compassion without discipline is egregious self-sabotage.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives... I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power." John Stuart Mill ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 )

Despite the fact that we cannot be absolutely altruistic in our behavior, we can still build our character to be loving and compassionate – to empathize with others.

Do I believe in helping people? he wondered. He might help people, he might not help them, he did not know beforehand, anything was possible. He did not seem to have a belief, or did not seem to have a belief regarding help. Perhaps I am the stony ground, he thought.

Effective altruism is about asking "How can I make the biggest difference I can?" and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's true, and a committment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be. As the phrase suggests, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's best for the world, and a commitment to do what's best, whatever that turns out to be.

Even though there is neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of the values of altruism and equality - even, notoriously (and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are is worst enemies in practice. So Nietzsche's critique is that a culture in the grips of MPS [Morality in the Pejorative Sense], even without acting on MPS, poses the real obstacle to flourishing, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would be most conductive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or perhaps even hostile to it.