Famous Quotes & Sayings

Richard Dawkins

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.

Richard Dawkins

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Richard Dawkins

A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

Richard Dawkins

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Whately

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

Richard Bach

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.

Russell Brand

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

Roz Chast

It's almost selfishness, taking care of your mental health. You can't just not do it.

Rose Kennedy

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

Rose Macaulay

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

Ronda Rousey

As an athlete you're taught to be selfish. When I'm training, it's usually all about me.

Tyler Cowen

Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

Owen Hart

YOU'RE TOO DAMN SELFISH!!!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

In proportion as a man is selfish, so far has he receded from the motive which constitutes virtue.

Pope Benedict XVI

Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction.

Pope John Paul II

Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism. No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the exaltation of the individual and the selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations become the ultimate goal of life. In this outlook, the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant.

Pope Francis

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.

Rachel Caine

Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.

Peter Sotos

And books that were published in much larger numbers than Selfish, Little are hard to find. And publishers who wanted to publish my last few works have them stuck in limbo while new distribution ideas and legal issues and fears are blown away.

Plutarch

Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead.

Pope Francis

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.

Pope Benedict XVI

The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development.

Natsuki Takaya

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

Mother Teresa

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

Mother Teresa

It is easy to be proud & harsh & selfish - so easy. But we have been created for better things.

Vic Fuentes

I don't see anything wrong with telling someone that you are selfish with their love and that you can't stand sharing them with anyone else.

Veronica Roth

And is it selfish of me to crave victory, or is it brave?

Veronica Roth

I am selfish. I am brave.

Thucydides

Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay.