Selfish Quotes by John Henry Newman, Sarah Paulson, Aisha Tyler, Simon Sinek, Kathy Burke, Alastair Cook and many others.
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.
If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.
In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and the disadvantaged.
There are good points about all… wars. People forget self. The virtues of magnanimity, courage, patriotism, etc., are called into life. People are more generous, more sympathetic, better, than when engaged in the more selfish pursuits of peace.
People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations.
In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.
Dear Scarlett! You aren’t helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God help the Yankees if they should get you.” –Rhett Butler
Your unhappiness doesn’t help anyone else – and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.
You have to be selfish to be an actor.
If believing in yourself and going after what you want in life and realising your worth is ruthless and selfish, then I’m definitely ruthless and selfish.
There’s nothing about me that’s selfish.
Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues…you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity…you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.
It is imperative that good people, men and women of principle, be involved in the political process; otherwise we abdicate power to those whose designs are almost entirely selfish.
That’s the point of music, to not be selfish and to help other people, I think.
Anorexia is such a self-consuming, selfish disease. It’s all about you. Becoming a mother, all of a sudden it wasn’t about me anymore.
Major actions by courageous and wise men will be necessary to avoid our continuing to blunder into the space age like unenlightened and selfish idiots.
I work very hard, but I also really enjoy time with my family as well. So I take everything as it comes, but I really am very selfish about my family time.
It’s a dream when some people think that once you give your life to God, all of a sudden things are perfect. That’s not the case. We live in a world that’s broken, where there’s disease, where people are selfish. The foundation of your faith helps you know how to put that in proper perspective.
I know you only get one chance to make a first impression in a city – and I was so disappointed in myself for how that first season in New York had gone. It felt like a blown opportunity. It felt like I’d cemented my reputation in the opposite way that I’d wanted to. Selfish. Not a leader. Not a winning player.
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted.
I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.
Sometimes you have to be selfish to be selfless.
We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
Yet one more item is needed to complete success, and that is the rendering of service to others in the community. Without this the mere satisfaction of selfish desire does not reach the top notch.
It’s good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.
The customer is a remarkably selfish person: He takes the relationship to where the execution is in his favor.
Self care isn’t selfish. It’s self esteem.
I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things…it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it. I succumbed to it.
In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.
I get a lot of joy from playing instruments, and I have a different personality on each instrument. I like to let that come out. I get kind of selfish.
Our marriage is grounded in the word of God. That’s really it. God is the core of our marriage, and the foundation and the blueprint for it is how we live, and being open and honest and communicating, but ultimately doing what pleases God, and not in a selfish manner.
As ecstatic as I was at the birth of my daughter, I felt selfish bringing her, and later my son, into our screwed-up world.
You’re selfish and you’re cold, and I’m tired of getting frostbite when I touch you. (Acheron)
As it’s your 50th birthday
The very best of cheers to you
Truthfully, I’m just being selfish
Coz now I am so cheerful, too
Happy, Cheerful Birthday
The very best of cheers to you
Truthfully, I’m just being selfish
Coz now I am so cheerful, too
Happy, Cheerful Birthday
When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.
Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.
Selfishness is the key quality that all successful people share. To be the best at what you do in any field, and to accomplish the goals you set for yourself, you have to be somewhat selfish.
A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow “for company.” Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.
I suppose that one of the reasons I wrote “In Contempt” was because of the money. After the trial I came to realize that there were things that I needed to do if I was to protect myself and my family, so there were some selfish reasons for it.
The best thing anyone can give to humanity is God consciousness. Then you can really give them something. But first you have to concentrate on your own spiritual advancement; so in a sense we have to become selfish to become selfless.
If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations.
A love to Christ which is so cowardly and selfish that it is unwilling to proclaim by a public confession its faith in Him who hung before all the world crucified for sinners, is a love which is hardly worth the name.
Human beings are selfish by nature. Everything that happens to a child, you immediately grab your own child and say, “I will never let that happen to you.”
Learning to not be selfish is what has changed in me the most since being married.
Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.
Business is a very beautiful mechanism to solve problems, but we never use it for that purpose. We only use it to make money. It satisfies our selfish interest but not our collective interest.
The happiest is the man who is not at all selfish.
If I had an author superpower, I would like to have the ability to stop time for everyone else. I feel like I have to disappear into myself to write books. I go away, into my head, for hours and weeks at a time, and I hate that I miss everything. It’s pretty selfish to want to pause other people, isn’t it?
The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.
Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.
I don’t think a player like Messi is a selfish player.
Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.
Think what a contribution selfish people of great talent could have made if their commitments had been made to Jesus Christ instead of to themselves! We will do better in every aspect of our lives if we commit to a God in whose life we see miracles, power over disease and death.
Parenthood helps you be less selfish, because you don’t care about anything as much as you do them.
We’ve been trained since kindergarten: Be nice, be kind, share, put on a smile. So we’re conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts, and that’s the right thing for society.
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
What people say about millennials is the same thing they’ve said about every generation: Younger people are obsessed with technology, and selfish, and they’re lazy, and they live with their parents… Guess what? That’s ’cause they’re young people!
The trouble with selfish motives is that they harden into principles, and you end up sending your kids to war for them.
If I had children, I would be very selfish. I wouldn’t be out doing things. But by not having kids, it makes me freer to travel the world and talk about things I feel are important.
Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as “social gains”, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as “selfish greed”.
I used to think you had to be very selfish, but as I get older my views on life change.
There is nothing selfish about enjoying yourself. In fact, as wise people have long said and psychologists have since discovered, happiness makes people less self-focused and more altruistic.
To be selfish, greedy and unwilling to help the needy gives rise to future starvation and clothlessness.
It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
I do this for the sake of myself. It’s a selfish process. I don’t really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.
I think I was a pretty selfish athlete.
A story has to be a good date, because the reader can stop at any time. Remember, readers are selfish and have no compulsion to be decent about anything.
The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.
This is a speculating and selfish age; and to think ‘money will answer all things,’ is too much the characteristic of Americans.
When you work together in a creative way, you have to be less selfish about your ideas and learn to let both parties feel valued. Of course, that’s also a really great quality to have in a relationship, too.
Love is not selfish. Love is something else.
I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.
Politics these days is a disgusting game of mud-slinging, filled with selfish people with selfish aims. I’m very glad I’ve retired away from the hustle and bustle of Whitehall.
I sometimes will be very shut off from everybody. I can be very pettish and sometimes not available when you need me. At those times, I’m very selfish and worrying about my own problems.
I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflicts the world of work and business; I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice.
Selfishness is weakness. But loving and caring for others is a position of power beyond anything we can possibly imagine.
Strange and mysterious name to give to the spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not!
A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.
Be not selfish in your doings: pass it on.
I’m trying to teach people not to be selfish. That’s the thing. If you have a good thing share it. Of course we’re not in a sexual relationship.
The only thing I think about is helping the team, respecting all my team-mates, not being selfish.
Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It’s awful and it hurts so many people around you. It’s a terribly selfish thing to do.
As actors, we are selfish. When listening to a story, we think of the significance of our character in that story.
Do you resolve to do the right and to love the true, depend upon it you will get no assistance from this world. Of its maxims, nine out of ten are false, and the other one selfish; and even that which is selfish has a lie at the bottom of it.
Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.
In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.
What passes for love is imperfect knowledge. Not knowing, initially, allows faithlessness to dress up as its opposite; casts the inarticulate as enigmatic, the selfish as forgetful, the angry as impassioned.
We’re often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there’s a God – and I believe there is – that God is there to help. That’s what God’s job is.
I think perfect love is any time you love unconditionally, without selfish intent, without concern for personal gain.
When we choose to have an abortion, we must do so understanding the full ramifications of what we are doing. Anything less feels to me to be hypocritical, a selfish abnegation of reality and responsibility.
Self esteem is not the same as being self centered, self absorbed or selfish. Self esteem is also not complacency or overconfidence, both of which and set us up for failure. Self esteem is a strong motivator to work hard. Self esteem is related to mental health and happiness.
It’s just really frustrating how people are just so selfish in this industry. It makes me very angry.
Creativity is very selfish. Scandalously so, in fact.
People say I’m selfish. There might be some truth to that.
I pass through many Me’s in the course of my day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying-in-Bed me and the Enjoying-the-Hot-Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.
I just don’t like greedy, indifferent, selfish lawyers. And there are not that many of them.
That’s the trick of free market economic theory: it doesn’t just ask you to only be selfish and not care about others. It tells you that by being selfish, you are helping others. And, in fact, by trying to directly help others, you will hurt them.
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
What was so brilliant about ‘Girls’ was that they allowed their characters to be ludicrous and selfish and faulted but didn’t shy away from a deeper psychological foundation for that neuroses.
I am being selfish here by saying this, but I believe ‘Barfi!’ helped me the most. It got me recognition and respect.
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.
I’m amazed, as quirky, individual and selfish as most of us are, that anyone stays married for long.
An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
Foolish, selfish people are always thinking of themselves and the result is always negative. Wise persons think of others, helping them as much as they can, and the result is happiness. Love and compassion are beneficial both for you and others. Through your kindness to others, your mind and heart will open to peace.
I’m used to living alone, and I like it that way. You become so selfish living alone…I’d make a terrible husband anyway.
I’ve been a pretty selfish mom and a very unselfish athlete for about three years now and it’s time to put my family first. It’s probably time to move on.
Show me an ‘easy person,’ and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his ‘easiness‘ are generally shouldered by other people.
Anyone who does anything for pleasure to indulge his selfish soul will surely burn in Hell.
Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.
In this lifetime you’re nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. […] I’d still relish this moment, killing you.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them.
I think we all have a selfish gene which rises to the top, sometimes. But then we’re also all capable of a sudden magnanimity.
Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.
I’m just selfish. I have to be for what I do.
The one thing I’ve learned about this sport is that it’s OK to be selfish at times.
Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions.
Not everyone is selfish in fashion. There are people who go to bed feeling good about themselves and then spread the love.
In much of today’s popular culture, the virtues of forgiveness and kindness are belittled, while ridicule, anger, and harsh criticism are encouraged. Let us not hurt the ones we love the most by selfish criticism!
You seem cynical because you’re always talking about that selfish behavior that’s dressed up as altruism. It doesn’t mean there isn’t altruism. It just means that it’s harder to make jokes about altruism.
I’m not a selfish person, I don’t think.
I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests – let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Purely altruistic behavior is pretty much impossible because of the selfish pleasures we derive from it.
Things change; your priorities change in life. So I’d never think of riding 100 miles on Christmas Day now, because I’ve got two kids, and it’s selfish.
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.
I think if we want to find happiness by finding a life partner, then it’s a little selfish. You should be complete within yourself, so that when you’re in a relationship, you can give out happiness rather than expect it.
Some people are selfish in all of their relationships. Those people are called sociopaths.
Congressional opposition to immigration reform or emergency funds doesn’t stem from any philosophical objections or differences of principle. It stems from a calculated, petty, selfish rejection of anything Obama proposes.
The main problem I always have with multiplayer is that human beings are grabby, entitled, selfish, ugly, stupid, evil cockstoppers.
All saints are selfish.
The truth is, I think we are a self-less society, not a selfish society. Because we’re so busy now.
Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.
I’ve never been a selfish player. I’ve never been able to just say I am going as well. I’ve always thought about the team first.
Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.
If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don’t, you’re simply ducking your responsibilities.
I suspect that much of our praying to be used is selfish, and underneath it is the sneaking desire to make our mark and be recognized.
Every forward is selfish, and any forward who tells you he is not selfish is a liar.
Meditation without selfless giving is not enough. You may go into very high states of consciousness but the rough edges will still be there – there may be lots of selfish motives lurking within the self – that you don’t see.
I’m not a selfish player; it’s about our team.
I’ve grown into that more aggressive, more selfish basketball at times.
No man will work for your interests unless they are his.
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.
Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it’s only when you have children that you realise you’re not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.
In general, when it comes to AI, many of us subconsciously cling to the selfish notion that humanity is the endpoint of evolution.
Never trust a sentimentalist. They are all alike, pretenders to virtue, at heart selfish frauds and sensualists.
He is altogether selfish, she thought in some surprise, the only man I have ever sat and talked to alone, and I am impatient; he is simply not very interesting.
You know, we’re often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there’s a God — and I believe there is — that God is there to help. That’s what God’s job is.
I put all of my energy into building the game and giving women opportunities and, to put everything into it and then to be deemed selfish or not a good team player or outspoken, it’s been hard. But at the same time, I’m going to get the critics and I know that.
California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.
I guess you could say that no matter what the characters are enduring, I try to make them retain their humanity. Their self-absorbed, grouchy, selfish, aggravating humanity.
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
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.
Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced at Tally—and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.
Drug addicts, when they are in their addiction, are selfish.
Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires – and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.
Of all influences that cause men to choose wrong, selfishness is undoubtedly the strongest. Where it is, the Spirit is not.
Individuals motivated by self-interest, self-indulgence, and a false sense of self-sufficiency pursue selfish ambition for the purpose of self-glorification.
To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
I just make music that I love. I’m kind of selfish when I make music. I’m like, ‘Do I like this?’
Is there any practice less selfish, any time less wasted than preparing something nourishing and delicious for the people you love?
I feel like God has intrusted a lot into me and I don’t want to sit on it and be selfish. I want to think long term on how we can help this next generation of Christian filmmakers to make a big impact for God.
Remember,’ she’d tell her staff, ‘every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
We don’t have selfish guys here, which sometimes leads to problems.
You have to understand: the narrative that people have about business and capitalism is that they are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and exploitative. Of course, I don’t agree with that narrative.
It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish.
I’m very selfish! I’m only thinking about how I would look in clothes, and not how we as a society might appear in those clothes.
We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.
I’ll do whatever I need to. I’m not selfish.
How I wish I could hug everyone and tell them that it’s okay. It’s okay to be scared and angry and hurt and selfish. It’s part of being human.
People cleave to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little, honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
People have evolved into something selfish, greedy and intolerant. People are unaccepting, because of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation… I’ve seen it in punk clubs, and I’ve seen it in the world.
All sin is selfish, whether it be lying, cheating, stealing, immorality, covetousness, or idleness. Sin is for one’s own ends, not for another’s-certainly not for the Lord’s ends.
My son’s the most precious thing to me: He’s changed me from being selfish to selfless.
If he doesn’t follow through with actions, he’s either selfish or a liar. Neither makes him sound like The One, does it?
All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.
At first it upset me to realize how many people are, at heart, selfish. Now I take that in stride, but people’s loneliness still gets to me.
The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
I like working with kids because I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces and, it’s kind of selfish, I want a future audience.
Gaining control over your health and well-being is one of those times in your life that you get to be completely selfish and not feel bad about it. If you want to meet your goals, you have to make it about you. You have to make it work for you and you alone. Anything less is a setup for failure.
And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give.
Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.
In this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.
It’s kind of selfish to say that you’re only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see.
When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views.
About when to let others sacrifice themselves for you, even if its selfish. They say that if the sacrifice is the ultimate way for that person to show you that they love you, let them do it.
The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture.
Have I ever hated anyone? Higuain – but he surprised me after getting to know him. No. 9s are selfish, they do a different job, but he has a generous, playful side. He’s a demanding guy because you have to be pamper him, motivate him. He needs affection to feed the incredible potential he has.
Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they’ll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.
Chaos is impatient. It’s random. And above all it’s selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want.
In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.
The selfish thing about an athlete is you always look at the side of things where you say I could’ve done that better.
Selfish isn’t a dirty word. It means we take care of ourselves and are able to give back.
Let’s be real: dads get a bad rap in the media. We’re talking Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ninja Rap’ bad. More often than not, they’re either pop lockin’ Soul Train-style after learning they aren’t the father, or they’re selfish man-children who have more toys than brain cells.
People are so selfish. Those you help are the ones who turn against you.
When you’re a driver, you are very selfish and you only need to focus on your own performance because ultimately, it’s your name on the side of the car.
Wherever I live, if there isn’t a restaurant I want to go to of a certain type, then I open it. That’s all. For selfish reasons.
You’ll be a good parent when you’re ready to no longer be selfish. Until I was about 35, it was all about me. I look back and I’m astonished at how I lived my life – it was totally self-involved.
All kids are selfish. I wanted to do homework and do my thing and call my agent. My mother’s needs weren’t in my mind at that moment.
We’ve all met a certain type of spiritual person. She’s a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She’s not a selfish person. But she’s always at the center of everything she’s doing.
What makes me a selfish player? Because I shoot the ball? I’m supposed to shoot the ball. That’s how you score points. Those points go on the scoreboard for the whole team.
When I was young, I was very selfish, now not any more.
The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.
As an athlete you’re taught to be selfish. When I’m training, it’s usually all about me.
I’m not too selfish or unselfish.
I’d rather be remembered as a player who came on and impacted a lot of games for England. If I ever take a selfish thought-process of, ‘I’m doing this for myself,’ then things will be seriously wrong.
I say you don’t need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.
Business demands faith, compels earnestness, requires courage, is honestly selfish, is penalized for mistakes, and is the essence of life.
The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day.
My philosophy is as simple as ever – smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward.
Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.
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.
I can’t say the connection is one I’ve made consciously, but quitting drinking allowed me to be less selfish. My wife would definitely say that one of the major benefits of me quitting drinking is that I have more time and focus for other people.
I was loosely aware that most of my characters were fundamentally selfish people, but I didn’t intentionally make that a theme.
You know, I’m not a selfish guy.
It’s very selfish when I write. I’m not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I’m not even really aware of writing for myself.
My best friends always say to me, ‘Think about yourself first,’ and tell me to be more selfish. But I’m not like that. I am a professional. I am of service to the club and to the manager.
For myself, suffering doesnt make me a good person; it makes me selfish. Why do we think that people who have less should find it edifying?
He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed.
Obviously there are certain times when you need to be selfish in the game, but to be selfless and do what’s best for your teammates, I think that that’s winning basketball.
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.
I love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.
In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of ‘The Selfish Gene,’ I did actually use the metaphor of a ‘virus.’ So when anybody talks about something going viral on the Internet, that is exactly what a meme is, and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.
Why do you think people cheat?,” I asked. “Because they’re bored? Because they can? Because they’re selfish and think they’re entitled to anything they want? Because they don’t think they’ll get caught?
I want to create a life that is just healthy and peaceful – an enclave, really, of retreat. It’s not helpful for the big picture. It’s totally selfish to run away like that.
I don’t want to have kids and so I am not going to have kids. People who want kids are going to have kids. I’m doing what I want to do and people who want kids are doing what they want to do. What about this scenario makes me selfish?
If my love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. Such a love is barter, for there is exchange of love and devotion in return for something. It is conditional love.
If I deserve a new contract, the contract will come. I’m not a selfish guy, I want the team to keep winning games, I don’t go crazy about my contract.
I’m a really selfish person. But I would do anything for my friends.
Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
People talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man’s duty to his family may make a rigid course seem a selfish indulgence of his own righteousness.
All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.
The soul lives forever by giving, not receiving. This is the grand paradox. You get most by giving most. Conversely, by receiving much you impoverish yourself. By selfish accumulation you become bankrupt.
I look back on my life and have to face the fact that I have been narcissistic and selfish.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Although our emotions sometimes behave like spoiled, selfish children, unfortunately we cannot send them to their room or tell them to stop screaming.
When you’re competing, you need to be selfish. You need to think of yourself first.
Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!
I think Jughead’s a selfish character. I think he really is.
Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.
I’m so blessed, and Jessica just does such an incredible job of making everything work, because this is such a selfish profession with the time commitment.
You can be selfish by being too unselfish at times.
It was because all we wanted was each other’s constant love and attention and for no one else to receive that love and attention, which is a selfish and difficult place to be in a relationship. We were emotionally retarded, and that was the best we could do at the time.
I think I’m hornier than most dudes. I’m not a selfish lover – but the bottom line is… I guess I am horny. I’m insatiable. I can never get enough.
Americans, apparently, either do nothing about the world’s problems, in which case they are ignorant and isolationist, selfish and gutless, or they try to do something about the world’s problems, in which case they are arrogant and naive, greedy and bullying.
I’m not afraid of new things. I’m just afraid of feeling alone even when there’s somebody else there. I’m afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that’s selfish, but it’s the way I feel.
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor’s.
I’ve learned a lot just being around people who grew up so differently from me, which is cool. It teaches you how to be a lot more tolerant. The bigger your world is, the more tolerant and accepting you become, because you have friends from all walks of life. You learn to be a little bit less selfish.
Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.
The main rule to me is to honor God with your life. To life a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know, help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.
I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you’re pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I’m a witness because I’m not participating.
Sometimes in life, you have to make a selfish decision and do what’s best for you.
I love Michael Bay movies. I don’t think I’d be selling out if I did one. I happen to like his movies. I think selling out is doing something you don’t believe in, and you’re doing it for a selfish purpose.
It’s so easy to be selfish in your 20s and not want to sacrifice.
Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers
If you have a mental model that says big corporations are fundamentally greedy and selfish and exploitative, you don’t really want to have an exception to that model. It’s much easier to say, ‘Yes, Whole Foods has been corrupted.’
I’m sorry I kissed you- it was selfish and it upset you- but you can’t ask me to pretend I didnt want to.
Artists are the worst [people]. They are selfish, self-centred; they don’t care what happens.
Tragedies make you realize how selfish you are.
My cares come from a very selfish place ’cause in reality I’m young, and I haven‘t had the experience to be mature yet.
A lot of music comes from a selfish place.
The reason I’m a writer is to understand other people and myself more. The reason I’m a writer is to dramatize stories about human beings so that it improves my life. So that’s a very selfish thing.
Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.
I can`t get excited about politics, but I love it as a game. Because what I love in politics – this is very selfish of me, but who cares – what I do love in politics is this ability it has to make you think in new ways.
Love is a balance between independence and interdependence. In love, you want to be independent and interdependent. You want to be a little bit selfish and a little bit selfless. Love can be an antidote to loneliness, as long as there is some aloneness in it.
I am a greedy, selfish actor, and for me, my role is important.
God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.
He was my hero, though it was probably for the wrong reasons. Because he could hit people harder than anyone else, and things like that. It’s only recently I’ve come to understand how selfish he could be, how hard on his children.
I’m not selfish at all.
It’s true that being in an individual sport, you have to be a little bit selfish.
I’m an egotist, but I’m not selfish. There’s a difference. I’m a neurotic, I guess. I can’t stop thinking about myself. It isn’t that I think myself so important. I simply can’t think about anything else, that’s all.
A man’s sentiments are generally just and right, while it is second selfish thought which makes him trim and adopt some other view. The best reforms are worked out when sentiment operates, as it does in women, with the indignation of righteousness.
When you center life around yourself, not only do you miss out on God’s best, but you rob other people of the joy and blessings that God wants to give them through you.
This over-consumption is also manifest in our use of raw materials. It can even be found in our dietary habits… . People are well aware of this. The root of the problem lies in a selfish world view which inflates personal consumption beyond the essential.
Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you’re diving in and experiencing the Self, you’re not closing yourself off from the world. You’re strengthening yourself, so that you can be more effective when you go back into the world.
In the past, I’ve been a selfish player. I’ll definitely admit that.
I was really selfish, and I didn’t want to listen to anyone. Then I started working with some really amazing people, traveling more, and figuring out who I was as a person – looking at different things, listening to different music.
I think what’s most fun is playing someone who’s sort of selfish and in a lot of ways unlikeable, but there’s this really big heart underneath it that you get little glimpses of.
The Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?
Yeah. Just keep the live feed going so that I can see it and pretend I’m there, too. (Tory) Yes, my queen. Anything else you’d like? (Geary) A million dollars and Brad Pitt. (Tory) You forgot world peace. (Geary) I’m feeling a bit selfish today. Teenage hormonal overdose, I think. Or just general excitement. (Tory)
We make music for a living. Like I’ve always said, if you like what you’re doing, you’re halfway there; if someone else likes it, that’s even better. If they don’t like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.
There’s a side to you as an actor, a selfish side, that wants to go on and play different roles.
I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.
On a selfish basis, I really enjoy sports and activity.
To call myself a fighter is to be selfish at times. It makes me resent my opponent. That’s motivation I can tap into.
Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference. It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.
A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.
I feel so selfish, because I want the best of both worlds. I want to keep the image I’ve worked so hard to create.
If you’re an actor, and you’re selfish and not strong, it’s difficult to maintain a good personal life or a solid career, and I was selfish and had a lot of anger that went way back.
I’ve been selfish over the years, and other people who have made it have too, but I can only speak for myself.
A personal selfish prayer is bad whether made before an image or an unseen God.
If we are ever going to rescue our nation from selfish entitlement, political correctness, and collectivism, we must start sending citizen-statesman warriors to fight for us in Washington, and I believe Col. Maness will do just that.
A selfish person says, hey, me and my four at home and no more and whatever happens to you is OK. But it can’t be that way. It cannot be that way.
I’m not a selfish guy, I’m not a stats guy.
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
In matters editorial, I am a believer in totalitarian despotism. Most writers are lazy, difficult, selfish, thoughtless, and unreliable.
I change my mind so much, I’m better going on my own. Shopping is a selfish activity anyway.
There are times where you have to be selfish.
We put out a certain energy and we are a certain type of guy. I think the way we played out there for instance, we were down with a few minutes left and instead of everybody breaking apart or being selfish, I think we just pulled together.
It is not selfish or narcissistic to love yourself. It is your first and foremost responsibility.
The more our hearts and minds are turned to assisting others less fortunate than we, the more we will avoid the spiritually cankering effects that result from greed, selfishness and overindulgence.
I find that the crazy narcissists, the selfish loons are often the most fun to be around, weirdly.
When you’re younger, you’re more selfish, because there’s so much self-exploration, you’re in your own mind.
Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
At a certain time in your career you can’t share your time with anyone else. You have to be completely selfish – so that you can write your music.
The worst thing people ever say is that ‘I can’t afford to have kids!’ It’s selfish, and what infuriates me is when people say they can’t do stuff they like go on holidays and buy cars when they have kids. You can – you find the money, you’ve just got to work harder for it.
Selfish people are, by definition, those whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness. Yet. . . these selfish people are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making others happy.
Living a happy life is my main priority. You guys may think I am selfish for “wasting my talent” by staying away from events for a bit, but I am finally at a comfortable place where I can honestly say, if you guys see me out on tour again it’s because I am there to win, and I’m going to go 100%.
I think it’s really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible – and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so it’s good to see people in the media representing all of those things.
What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a gene that makes organisms sacrifice themselves for other organisms under the influence of selfish genes.
My son’s the most precious thing to me; he’s changed me from being selfish to selfless.
I don’t want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments. That’s no contribution to society. [Tennis] was purely selfish; that was for me.
You get to a point where you get tired of being stupid and selfish and not being honest with yourself.
Strikers are egotists, selfish. We have to be.
It’s very easy to become selfish and narrow-minded and see ballet as the only thing in life, but there’s lots more.
Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they’re vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.
I’m not a selfish guy.
Probably the greatest need in the Church today is a body of men who are absolutely devoted, every selfish purpose and plan given up, to the one great end of magnifying the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of the nation.
Our true passions are selfish.
As an athlete, you have to become quite selfish with your time and your body and your training.
…in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
People have these weird ideas about artists being romantic, generous people, and sometimes I feel like an asshole, a selfish kid, a brat, the lucky one, because I get to do this and it’s how I make my living.
I think [G.W.] Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.
When it comes to my racing career I’m very driven and very selfish. People who are around me at races will know that I’m a different person here than in my personal life. I completely blank people at races. I need to be focused. I’m rude.
Even Cristiano Ronaldo has developed from a selfish goalscorer into someone who likes to pass the ball.
Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night‘s sleep.
Her heart is full of joy with love, for in the Lord her mind is stilled. She has renounced every selfish attachment and draws abiding joy and strength from the One within. She lives not for herself, but lives to serve the Lord of Love in all, and swims across the sea of life breasting its rough waves joyfully.
For me, it is sad when I listen to this, that one player must be more selfish to reach the top level.
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.
A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty,
‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t
feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own,
outside of husband and children.
‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t
feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own,
outside of husband and children.
I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason – to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.
Now is the one time in my life I can be 100% selfish. I’m not married; I don’t have kids; I can focus on my career.
I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, ‘I’m like you – I’m frustrated, I’m not an expert, I don’t have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I’m selfish too.’
If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit.
Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.
A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.
Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven’t even got a self to express.
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.
I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I’ve kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world.
The world today speaks a great deal about love, and it is sought by many. But the pure love of Christ differs greatly from what the world thinks of love. Charity never seeks selfish gratification. The pure love of Christ seeks only the eternal growth and joy of others.
Live your life as you see fit. That’s not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.
Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive.
Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left, and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil.
My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.
To join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Man must get his thoughts, words and actions out of this vast moral jungle. We are not predators. We are, hopefully, more than instinctive killers and selfish brutes. Why take such a dim view of our potentials and capabilities?
Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.
Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It’s awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It’s a terribly selfish thing to do.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.
Love is the most selfish of all the passions.
If you’re competing right, if you’re doing it right, competition should be a very selfish pursuit.
The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
Since the 70s and the 80s you see the rise of neoliberalism. The central dogma of neoliberalism was that most people are selfish. So, we started designing our institutions around that idea, our schools, our workplaces, our democracies. The government became less and less important.
I don’t believe I’m selfish in any way.
The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.
From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people’s good.
Gods tend to be selfish. Even when they’re helpful, they always have their own motives. That’s why you have to be careful about trusting them.
I’ve dated athletes before but it’s too tough because we have the same job, we deal with the same problems and both do a very selfish sport.
The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.
There is a difference between being self-interested and being selfish. I will never be selfish.
Secrets are inherently selfish. The longer you keep them, the harder it is to put yourself in other people’s shoes about them and the more irrational your thinking surrounding it becomes.
To have a high basketball IQ, I think you have to be unselfish, but also selfish at the same time. To be able to say, okay, I know this is going to work, so let’s do it.
I see my share of loons. I just performed with someone who had a meltdown on stage. He needed focus, and he was ‘stealing it’ and just being crazy and selfish and childish and having a great time doing it – to the detriment of everybody else.
Marriage provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self-centered. I think one of the reasons that we are counseled to get married early in life is to avoid developing inappropriate character traits that are hard to change.
Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.
It sounds so incredibly selfish, but you just can’t earn the same money doing theater as you can doing television and film. I know that’s awful, but you get a mortgage and a family, and suddenly, paying that seems quite important.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
It occurred to me that actors are selfish, and they think that the world revolves around them. For one year, I quit, and I went to an ashram in Bihar and went to Himalayas backpacking.
If my love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. Such a love is barter, for there is exchange of love and devotion in return for something. It is conditional love.
We cannot free ourselves from pride and selfish ambition; a divine rescue is absolutely necessary.
She didn’t know there were things worse than selfish.
As long as everything is happy at home, I can be totally selfish at work.
It would be selfish to believe that we are the only intelligent life in the universe.
I believe that women are many different types of people. There are brave women, there are cowardly women, there are altruistic women, there are selfish women. Most people are a combination of the same.
Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant.
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
I know that love is real when it’s not convenient, when it’s not selfish, when it’s challenged, sometimes even if it’s not reciprocated.
The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.
Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it’s only when you have children that you realize you’re not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.
To be honest, I’m selfish as an artist. I’m doing what I want to do and what I want to hear.
To think that the heritage of the West, including post-war liberalism, was a selfish, secular, practical arrangement of politics is a fiction.
Oh! If those selfish men, who are the cause of all one’s misery, only knew what their poor slaves go through! What suffering, what humiliation to the delicate feelings of a poor woman, above all a young one, especially with those nasty doctors.
As you get older you try to do things that please you more. You get a little more selfish. You start thinking I want to do things where I enjoy myself.
As much as it’s awful to learn about all the greedy and selfish decisions that some people make, I know there are many more people who have good intentions.
If we desire to do what will please God, and what will help men, we presently find ourselves taken out of our narrow habits of thought and action; we find new elements of our nature called into activity; we are no longer running along a narrow track of selfish habit.
Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.
No man is more cheated than the selfish man.
Our thoughts are either focused on what’s eternal, life-changing, and true, or lost in the details of our temporary, selfish, false beliefs.
We’re all born with selfish desires, so we can all relate to those feelings in others. But kindness is something made individually by each person. So it’s easy to misunderstand when others are trying to be kind to you.
The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.
In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.
Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.
I didn’t have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself.
You’re real selfish and everything is focused on you and how you feel until you realize there is something missing and that’s your relationship with Jesus Christ.
In documentary filmmaking, there’s a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims.
Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it, But why not begin on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others – yes, and a lot less dangerous.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Even if Trump means well, his schemes tend to be blunt, selfish, and short-sighted rather than nuanced, empathetic, and thought through.
The only time I think about life beyond F1 is when I contemplate becoming a dad. But there’s no way that’s going to happen while I’m still racing. To be successful in F1 you need to be very selfish in lots of ways and you’re away from home for long periods. That’s not the kind of father I want to be.
I think in the old music, everything was so competitive. It was all about – very selfish in a lot of ways.
Negativity is the enemy of creativity. For instance if you’re filled with depression, you can hardly even get out of bed, let alone feel like creating something. If you are filled with bitter, selfish anger, this occupies the mind and leaves little room for creative ideas.
My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.
A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest.
A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
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.
I’m trying so hard to win or make the right play or whatever, that you know, it kind of comes off as being selfish, but I’m not, I’m just used to being the guy.
It might be a selfish choice, but I find it quite difficult to design for individuals and prefer the distance of larger schemes. It’s the same reason why, as a designer, I don’t do wedding dresses.
She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
It is the liberal philosophy, not the conservative one, that views humans as selfish automatons.
Maybe you’re a little selfish that day; maybe you want something, and it can’t happen, but you don’t want to take no for an answer. Everybody has those moments, and you just have to be okay with being open and showing it.
The really great man is often considered selfish by a large group of people who are connected with him and who feel that he might bestow upon them more benefits than he does.
America was built on rugged individualism, and today that has evolved into a culture of narcissism. But God didn’t create you to live for you. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to put aside your selfish ambition.
It’s not selfish to give TO yourself as much as you give OF yourself
It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.
Dreams are selfish, in the sense that they always concern issues and events that were weighing on your mind at the time you had the dream. Dreams will warn you about concerns in your career, in your family life, in your relationship with your spouse, and give insight into problems with your children.
We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
I want to be first. I know that’s selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. I’ll be wrong. But that’s the way I feel.” (Sookie Stackhouse)
Most female artists – to do what you have to do and to be as honest as you have to be, to be as selfish as you have to be, as tunnel-visioned as you have to be to make art, not entertainment – you can’t compromise, really.
I think I have a better sense of my weaknesses – being self-important, selfish and having a big ego probably triggers all the other stuff. I can see myself more clearly.
It seems hopeless, hopeless. Those who eat meat [at public expense] are a mean, selfish lot, and so the country is doomed. Our only hope lies in the grass-roots folk who eat our traditional food.
When I’m upset, everyone knows about it, and it’s a selfish trait because everyone suffers.
I worry sometimes that I’m a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that’s dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.
What does being an athlete mean? It means I have to be a little selfish again. I have to put my career sort of ahead of everything else – and I don’t like doing that.
I am suffering incessant temptations to uncharitable thoughts at present; one of those black moods in which nearly all one’s friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there should be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil.
A selfless act out of even the purest desire to do for others, will be selfish in the satisfaction and happiness it brings to one doing it.
We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.
Marriage takes your whole heart; selfish people can’t pull it off.
Socialism is the ideal state, but it can never be achieved while man is so selfish.
I know myself that we goalscorers are selfish and always thinking about our goalscoring ratio.
Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything.
These are uncertain times. We cannot be content to rest on yesterday‘s laurels. These are times when we must strengthen rather than let down those standards which have stood in such good stead in crises that are past. Baseball cannot be selfish, or irresponsible, or lax. Neither can the men who operate it.
I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid, unshakeably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.
My work requires acting at its most committed – it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn’t work for narcissistic or selfish actors.
Guys that are playing in the last year of their contracts are playing for their livelihood and that tends to come off as selfish.
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.
To write an album takes so much focus and selfish time, to just write and think about your life. For me. Maybe not for other people.
We will not go out there and make negative music for selfish gain.
The abortionist I worked for, he’s a very greedy man, a selfish man.
Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.
I am selfish. I am brave.
One player’s selfish attitude can poison a locker room and make it hard, if not impossible, to establish team work
Rocknroll is a selfish business because youre always thinking about the tour, the show, promotion and writing new albums. Your head is somewhere else, but Ive learnt to not let it be all-consuming. You want time with your family.
There is no man at once so unselfish and selfish as a man in love.
Human beings are not intrinsically selfish, which isolates us from others. We are essentially social animals who depend on others to meet our needs. We achieve happiness, prosperity and progress through social interaction. Therefore, having a kind and helpful attitude contributes to our own and others’ happiness.
Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
A lot of times you’ll hear horror stories about actors being incredibly selfish and only wanting themselves to shine, but for me, it’s not about just one person. It’s about the whole team. That’s the way I look at acting. That’s the way I look at everything I do.
Everybody wants to talk about NBA players being selfish and arrogant and individuals. But what you saw today was a team bonding and facing adversity and coming out with a big win.
Loving yourself has nothing to do with being selfish, self-centered or self-engrossed. It means that you accept yourself for what you are. Loving yourself means that you accept responsibility for your own development, growth and happiness.
I don’t know if it’s ever OK for someone to be selfish. Perhaps there’s a time and place to be self-centered, but I think selfish never wins the race.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
You know, we’re really destroying ourselves because we’re really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish.
I suppose I’ve been selfish in the past and put my career first. But priorities change.
I was selfish and immature. I never wanted the attention. There were helicopters flying over the hospital while I was giving birth.
You form pretty strong opinions about the guys you compete against. You’re all very competitive; you’re all very selfish. So it’s easy to drum up some strong opinions in a second’s notice, like, ‘Argh! This guy!’
We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.
The whole brunt of the media and the government is to encourage people to be highly competitive and totally selfish and uncaring of others.
I’ve learnt an enormous amount from my children. Mostly that my agenda isn’t the most important thing in the world. For a while, I was trying to squeeze them into my life. And it was such torment! It makes you realise how selfish you are.
I didn’t breast-feed. I’m selfish.
The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.
I still dream of having a lifestyle brand but it’s not good enough to have that selfish dream when your kids are getting older and have their own interests.
Acting is not terribly important work, and I have always felt a bit of guilt about pursuing something that is so selfish. I love doing it, but it is never something that feels like it’s going to change or save the world.
It can be seen as being quite selfish, but I’m very happy to be selfish.
It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
A selfish man is a thief.
I’m a selfish, little pig of a man.
Yes, there will be situations when you may need to be a little selfish, but it is better to find the right balance.
The best leaders don’t set timid and selfish goals but instead set bold targets that may be harder to achieve.
The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.
You should sub a player out when you see a player not going full-speed or playing selfish basketball.
It was about the compelling need to make countries get along to prevent war, in contrast with the totally petty and selfish bullshit that drives the individuals who are supposedly in charge of these countries. It’s hard to believe that these self-centered people have nuclear weapons that they can fire at any moment.
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
But grieving people are selfish. They won’t let you comfort them and they say you don’t understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you’ve been functional to them.
In my team, I don’t want selfish players. I prefer to lose a game than have selfish players. I don’t want that in my club. Never.
I played Lucifer once, which is sort of a difficult character to research. I thought to myself, “We all have the potential to be selfish, to be cruel – at least to think evil thoughts, even if we don’t ever act out on them. Even if we don’t ever think we behave badly, we probably do more than we realize.”
We are all selfish, scared and stupid.
We can all be self-destructive. I make terrible choices all the time. It’s uncomfortable to admit that you did a thing that was selfish and that you knew would hurt someone else.
I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.
In order to be able to give a girlfriend the amount of time she deserves, you would need time, and I just can’t give her that. So, rather than being selfish or stupid enough to go into a relationship, it’s just been easier to be single.
I initially decided to speak about my anorexia and bulimia, partly out of a selfish motivation. I felt I had been scrutinised for my weight and thought, ‘At least judge and criticise me on the facts.’ There was a freedom with that. Now it’s out there, and I just get on with life. I’m at peace with things.
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.
I write from my life, my experience. I’m selfish that way.
Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.
I would not be a good mother. I mean, I love being an aunt to my niece and nephew. And I used to want to, like, adopt 10 kids – because I had friends who were adopted, and I thought that was the coolest thing, to be chosen. But again, my job is too selfish.
Be careful of selfish motives. You can mistake them for principles and end up dying for them.
We just played unselfishly. At times this year, we’ve played selfish, but today we passed the ball. … We were just very supportive of each other.
My co-stars call me selfish. They say, ‘You are only interested in yourself and what you are only interested is yourself and what you are doing in front of the camera.’ I reply, ‘I can’t help it; it’s what got me where I am.’
To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.
The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.
People think that you are a nasty, selfish person if you don`t want to have children.
That’s why charity work is very selfish at the same time, because it makes you feel good.
I would have been a terrible mother because I’m basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.
Celebrations have now become too selfish and I don’t like it. When I used to score I was happy to celebrate with my team-mates. Now when players score it is all about them.
Don’t listen to what anyone tells you about the kind of music you make. Just make it! Be yourself, make your own music, and be totally true to your art. Because it’s kind of a selfish thing to be an artist.
If you want to be wisely selfish, care for others
a society driven mainly by selfish individualism has all the potential for sustainability of a collection of angry scorpions in a bottle.
Not by mere eloquence, nor by handsome appearance, does a man become good-natured, should he be jealous, selfish and deceitful.
Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.
I think that people who don’t like animals tend to be selfish, but I’m biased.
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
I know it sounds selfish, wanting to do something no one else has done. But that’s what you’re out here for – to separate yourself from everyone else.
I do think that it is one of the eternal questions about art, though – is all art intrinsically selfish?
All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish
i hate leaving places i love i was never at one place long. am i selfish?
Fighting, you have to be selfish.
Patience is key. You can’t get selfish, and that’s the number one thing I’ve learned at WWE. The world continues to go round, and I just knew – given the right opportunity and the right moment – that the world would know I was good, but now the world knows that I’m great.
Everyone thinks I’m showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I’m silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I’m tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should.
There is some pretty powerful self-interest in wanting a future that is not just running storm-to-storm. The argument that I make is not that we aren’t competitive and selfish and greedy. We are. We’re all of these things. We’re complicated, competitive, greedy and nasty, and kind and generous and compassionate.
I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.
I always felt too young and selfish to have children of my own.
Business success isn’t just a selfish aim. Profits spread beyond those who make them and bring jobs and prosperity.
People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
Some say I’m selfish. My approach is the complete opposite of selfishness.
All of us would like to have our children and their grandchildren grow up with at least the level of prosperity that we had. In the U.S., we seem to be very selfish because the older generation is not making the sacrifices.
Through recognizing and realizing the empty essence, instead of being selfish and self-centered, one feels very open and free
Love . . . [is] a lack of personal selfishness.
If you look at the people in Hollywood who are heavy partiers, they’re selfish, self-centered and egotistical.
Actors – we’re selfish, but we can’t think about the work in that kind of selfish manner. I think that you have to step away from yourself, if you’re going to do it. Otherwise don’t do it; otherwise why do it?
There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.
Men tend to be selfish.
To be an Olympian is not flattering for any partner that’s with you. It’s a really selfish part of your life.
You can only hold on to something for so long and enjoy it just by yourself, what’s the point? It’s very selfish. For better or for worse, I feel like the point of all of this is to make someone feel something.
The nicest people fall in love indiscriminately … while under the influence of that pre-eminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous demands upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need.
It’s hard to get people to overcome the thought that they have to take care of themselves first. It’s hard to get players to give in to the group and become selfless as opposed to selfish.
Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends.
When Stuart passed away, I was so young and so selfish about living and having fun.
I’m selfish when it comes to work. I’m like, “Oh, that will be fun! I wanna do that!” I never think beyond my participation in a project.
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
This is the true joy of life-the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown to the scrap-heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances.
In this sport if you want to win you need to be selfish, it is that kind of sport, even though it is a team sport you need to think about yourself.
Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.
The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I’ve done. It’s all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.
No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.
The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.
You live this life being selfish, you’re not going to enjoy it like you will when you open your heart and your home up.
If you are striving to have more happiness in your life, it helps to guide your mind towards starting to recognize what are selfish motivations and what are constructive motivations.
Is not sorrow, all sorrow, selfish?
I believe in aliens. I think it would be way too selfish of us as mankind to believe we are the only lifeforms in the universe.
It is impossible to be both selfish and happy.
We have the ability to effect a great positive change in the world, starting with the training of our own minds and the overcoming of our deluded conditioning. Waking up is not a selfish pursuit of happiness; it is a revolutionary stance from the inside out, for the benefits of all beings in existence.
You do have to be fairly selfish when you have a gift. You cannot afford to let too many outside things get in the way.
I wanted to experience college and to travel for my selfish reasons.
I’m a good uncle, but I’m not a great caretaker. I feel oftentimes pretty selfish within the relationships I have with my siblings and, historically, with what I give back versus what I’ve taken over the years.
I know I’m not a selfish player. People around me know I’m not a selfish player. I do everything I can to make people around me understand I’m not a selfish player.
