Famous Quotes & Sayings

B. F. Skinner

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!

Bill Crawford

Selfish is caring for ourselves at others' expense ... Self-care is taking care of ourselves so that we can be there for others.

C. S. Lewis

If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit.

C. S. Lewis

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.

Cecelia Ahern

Deep down, underneath all his layers of stupidity, he’s a really good man. He may act out far too many selfish thoughts, says all the wrong things at all the wrong times, but behind closed doors he’s a best friend. I understand that he has idiotic tendencies and I can still love him for it. He may not be someone that you feel comfortable sitting next to at a dinner party but for me, he’s someone that I feel comfortable sharing my life with.

Art Alexakis

I have a pet peeve about bands that don't play their hits. I think it's kind of selfish.

Fred Funk

For selfish reasons, I really wish we were having a weak field, so I would have a better chance.

Anton LaVey

Satanism represents a form of controlled selfishness.

Charles Jencks

Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that.

Charles Dance

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

Chris Evert

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.

Arthur Ashe

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.

Ayelet Waldman

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.

Ayn Rand

It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.

Ayn Rand

If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed".

Ayn Rand

Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?

Ayn Rand

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

Ayn Rand

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....

Caprice Bourret

Men tend to be selfish.

C. S. Lewis

Selfishness has never been admired.

C. S. Lewis

‎"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior

Calvin Coolidge

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.

Alan Lightman

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?

Eddie Van Halen

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.

Aaron Kampman

What you learn about yourself is that you continue to see that you're selfish. It's so easy, in our Laodicean culture with all the different things that grab our minds that aren't of eternal value, to let those tentacles wrap themselves around your heart. That's one of the reasons why we love going overseas. It helps us to break free of those things. We've been on all of these trips, but it's easy to slide back into the selfishness of life. That's what we find out about ourselves.

Arthur Koestler

...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.

Arthur Koestler

I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society-he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity.

Dennis Prager

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.

Aristotle

Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.

Anne Sullivan

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

Alexandre Dumas

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

Alan Cohen

It is not selfish to be happy. It is your highest purpose. Your joy is the greatest contribution you can make to life on the planet. A heart at peace with its owner blesses everyone it touches.

Alan Cohen

It is not selfish or narcissistic to love yourself. It is your first and foremost responsibility.