Best 705 quotes in «selfish quotes» category

My big problem with corporate structure is this bizarre sense of loyalty you're supposed to feel -- towards what is basically a virus. It grows or dies, like any virus. And you use it for your own selfish ends." - source

My feelings about my mortality are less selfish than they used to be. I used to affect a cavalier attitude to death; now I see it from my son's perspective.

My hunch is that people often affiliate with causes online for selfish and narcissistic purposes. Sometimes, it may be as simple as trying to impress their online friends, and once you have fashioned that identity, there is very little reason to actually do anything else.

My hero is me. Why? Because I was a poor little kid who was told, `Hey stupid, can`t you speak English?` Now all those people work for me. Despite whatever circumstances I came across, I was always able to rise to the top and there`s only one way to do that - by being selfish, but also by believing in yourself. Belief is self-knowing. Even Yoda out of Star Wars said, `Do or do not. There is no try.

My life, in some ways, has been a half-measure. I didn't commit myself all the way to my marriage and family, because I would have given up more. And I didn't go all the way with just being completely selfish. I always wonder where my career would be if I was more selfish.

My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

My son's the most precious thing to me: He's changed me from being selfish to selfless.

Neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall ever prevail against us.

Myth: There's conflict between selfish free markets and a benevolent world of human sympathy.

My wife at times will say I'm stubborn, selfish, insensitive, vague, deaf at times, blah, blah, blah... but she's never said I was boring!

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.

My wit is like your legs," said Xochi. " It would be selfish of me to keep it hidden.

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

Now when the historic religions give trivial answers to these very tragic questions of our day, when an evangelist says, for instance, we mustn't hope for a summit meeting, we must hope in Christ without spelling out what this could mean in our particular nuclear age. This is the irrelevant answer, when another Evangelist says if America doesn't stop being selfish, it will be doomed. This is also a childish answer because nations are selfish and the question about America isn't whether we will be selfish or unselfish, but will we be sufficiently imaginative to pass the Reciprocal Trade Acts.

Normally I hate people who whine all the time, but in your case, it would be okay to complain. Be selfish, say what you want once in a while. It's okay to let yourself be sad." -Kyo talking to Tohru

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former.

Once a big loss has happened it is part of the picture forever. Not something you "get over." While each loss has felt specific, one thing I miss with each loss is entirely selfish, I miss the way a particular person saw me, understood me. But part of the challenge of being alive is to remain curious in any circumstance and this has helped me with grief. I want to feel all the contours and contradictions of living.

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time.

one trouble with all the churches is that they have too many incurable saints in them, men and women who pray too much and do too little, who cannot forget their own selfish salvation enough to look after other people's without feeling their own spiritual pulse all the time they are doing it. Of late I've sometimes suspected that it is nearly as debilitating to stay in the church all the time as it would be to stay in a hospital all the time.

One player's selfish attitude can poison a locker room and make it hard, if not impossible, to establish team work

Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.

One reason that a truth and reconciliation process is needed for group selection is to return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwin’s solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology“: Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.

Only a very small percentage can regard conditions from any but a selfish point of view or conceive of any but their own shoe-pinch.

Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo.

Our music is honest. We are who we are... messed up, dysfunctional sinners that have been loved in spite of our hate. We don't deny that we live in a evil world and that we have been evil people and we have evil tendencies... but we also have touched righteousness through our faith in Christ.. and we have received salvation, hope, and love... So our songs always acknowledge this truth and in turn we hope they bring faith, hope and love into the midst of the selfish, fearful hatred that makes up so much of the world we live in.

Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others.

People are just self-centered-it's all about them. And we're telling people it's okay to be 'all about you' because you're a victim and it's not your fault. That's why society has gotten more and more belligerent and selfish.

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

People are selfish. But they can also be compassionate and generous, and they care about the country. But not when they feel threatened. That’s why this is such a crucial time. We can go in either direction. But if we don’t make a choice soon, it will be too late to turn things around. I think people are willing to make the right choice. But they need leadership. They’re hungry for leadership.

People are suspicious of single men on vacation, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they're selfish, and probably a bit pervy. I can't say they're wrong.

People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.

People think if you look after yourself you're being selfish, you know.

People of delicate health, selfish dispositions, and coarse minds, can always bear the sufferings of others placidly.

People think that you are a nasty, selfish person if you don`t want to have children.

People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.

People were intrinsically selfish, and many hated the idea of a woman in charge of the Institute. They would not put themselves at risk for her. Only a few weeks ago he would have said the same thing about himself. Now, knowing Charlotte, he realized to his surprise, the idea of risking himself for her seemed an honor, as it would be to most Englishmen to risk themselves for the queen.

People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

Playing Sally McKenna was a wonderful, freeing thing because we all in life have so many responsibilities to ourselves, to other people, that we rarely get to explore a very selfish side of ourselves in doing what we want, when we want, how we want, without answering to or being responsible for anyone else.

Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence - by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed - only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

Photographs put time into such a perspective. They humble us and our selfish memories.

Racing is a very selfish, self-centred, self-glorifying thing. My wife's life for 14 years was centered around me. It was all about me. It was all for my ego.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Rather than, as an actor, I want the audience to like me, I'm going to smile beautifully and I've got everybody's sympathy - what about showing the moments when somebody is unbelievably petty? Or really selfish? The faults, the little things, those are the things that interested me about playing the character.