Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.

A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.

Egoism , which is the moving force of the world, and altruism , which is its morality , these two contradictory instincts , of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.

Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter.

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions-between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, cooperativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.

We, all of us, could do a much better job of evoking what someone has called the universal principle of human altruism: the urge in us all to help others who are in danger.

Social Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Altruism is written in everlasting and resplendent character on the Cross of Christ, and it was at Calvary that the centre of life was shifted from selfishness to sacrifice.

There’s no such thing as altruism.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

All altruism springs from putting yourself in the other person‘s place.

Live to learn, learn to live, then teach others.

The Service without Hope
Is tenderest, I think–
…
There is no Diligence like that
That knows not an Until

Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.

Altruism raises your mood because it raises your self-esteem, which increases happiness. Plus, giving to others gets you outside of yourself and distracts you from your problems.

The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

… Don’t mistake any of this for altruism…Fear and greed just doesn’t work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better.

Enthusiasm is the thing which makes the world go round. Without its driving power, nothing worth doing has ever been done. Love, friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to career or hobby-all these, and most of the other good things of life, are forms of enthusiasm.

By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.

She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again.

Before Darwin, our world was very religious. People saw altruism as something given by God for us to be good so that we could go to Paradise.

I think there is a level of altruism that wants to help fellow human beings.

Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives – honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on – that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.

If you don’t have altruism, inner strength, inner peace, attention, then it’s a trauma. It makes a difficult life for you and for others.

Altruism is for those who cannot endure their desires.

I don’t deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn’t because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell – and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

One of the great issues in biology is the origin of altruism – of why you would do something for someone else that could hurt you – and Darwin posited that it might be rooted in maternal instinct, in sacrificing yourself for your children.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

Guilt is altruism’s stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.

Love is the most ethically consistent experience, because selfishness and altruism no longer seem opposed or in conflict.

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.

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. … To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It’s important because it combines both the heart and the head.

The key to heaven’s gate cannot be duplicated.

Be your own hero, it’s cheaper than a movie ticket.

Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better.

I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.

Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.

There’s a fine line between participation and mockery.

The art of giving is perfected through anonymity.

We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.

Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism – the belief that the individual exists to serve others – is translated into political reality.

What [Margaret Thatcher] made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, altruism. The only collective that she understood was: Rally around and slay the enemy.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

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.”

Acknowledging someone is an act of altruism in the first place, so converting that act of altruism into a pizza party or company fleece jacket or a gift card is fine, but it’s not in keeping with spirit in which it all began.

Most people understand that sexual lust has to do with propagating genes. Copulation in nature tends to lead to reproduction and so to more genetic copies. But in modern society, most copulations involve contraception, designed precisely to avoid reproduction. Altruism probably has origins like those of lust.

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.

Many of our moments of prosociality, of altruism and Good Samaritanism, are acts of restitution, attempts to counter our antisocial moments.

No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not become a nuisance after three days.

To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless… You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.

The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

You are not here in the world for yourself. You have been sent here for others. The world is waiting for you!

When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life — trust, love, mercy, and altruism — then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here.

If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

Politicians should reflect on the well-documented fact that fearful, insecure people lose their sense of tolerance and altruism.

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.

Altruism is one of the most fundamentally social impulses, and doing things for others without expecting anything in return is core to what makes us human. This is why, from the day Facebook Platform launched in 2007, Causes has been honored to be one of the most popular applications, with over 140 million users.

If you look into their [chimpanzees] eyes, you know you’re looking into a thinking mind. They teach us that we are not the only beings with personalities, minds capable of rational thought, altruism and a sense of humor. That leads to new respect for other animals, respect for the environment and respect for all life.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

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

Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement which tries to work out the most effective ways to improve the world. Effective altruists – conform to old-school utilitarian principles – consider all causes and actions, and then act in the way that they believe brings about the greatest positive impact.

Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn’t stipulate whether those others should be one’s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

Smile, it’s better than a poke in the eye.

Because I took an oath to help people. To protect them from The League and any corrupt government. (Devyn) Yeah, and I know people better than to believe that for even an instant. Altruism is dead. People use and they take until you’re nothing but a bleeding corpse on the ground at their feet. (Alix)

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value – and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There’s a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.

Altruism became the sole legitimate motivation for giving a kidney. And it is a partial – I say a partial failure.

Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Give worshipfully. Our giving is a reflexive response to God’s grace. It doesn’t come out of our altruism – it comes out of the transforming work of Christ in us.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone–my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music–ensemble music, not soloism–we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.

Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

Which is more subversive-and corrosive-to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.

I am an actress, I earn money, I am well-known. I don’t think it is altruism to become engaged in humanitarian work. It’s the least one can do.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’

I had always thought that the ‘good,’ and the ‘bad‘ and the ‘violent‘ did not exist in any absolute, essential sense. It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives in the setting of a Western. An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference.

The root of happiness is altruism – the wish to be of service to others.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years – some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology – relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes.

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

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it is an enemy.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.

True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.

In the development of mankind as a whole, just as in individuals, love alone acts as the civilizing factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism.

Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He’ll come in handy if you run out of food.

Altruism, especially involving basic freedoms, can be what shareholders value most.

When you engage in compassion, and you hear a distressing sound, like someone calling for help, there is an activation in an area of the brain called the insular, which has to do with empathy and altruism, that is vastly more activated than in non-meditators.

Altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.