Famous Quotes & Sayings

Phil Collins

Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers

Queen Victoria

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

Shunryu Suzuki

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.

Shannon Hoon

I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you?

Seth

Ideas that spread win. Ideas don't have to be selfish to win, in fact, it turns out that the more generous the interactions an idea produces, the more likely it is to spread.

Stephenie Meyer

Listen up, Wanda. I know exactly what you don't want to be. But we're human, and we're selfish, and we don't always do the right thing. We aren't going to let you go. Deal with it.

Stephenie Meyer

I don't want you to leave Which is exactly why I should. But don't worry. I'm essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should.

Marcus Aurelius

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

Marcus Aurelius

I'm going to be meeting with people today who talk too much - people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won't be surprised or disturbed, for I can't imagine a world without such people.

Thomas A. Edison

The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.

Shia LaBeouf

I'm just selfish. I have to be for what I do.

Taraji P. Henson

I'm not a selfish actor. I believe that it's a team effort. You're not in a scene by yourself.

Swami Vivekananda

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

Swami Vivekananda

Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world.

Tony Blair

The only society that works today is also one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually, to help each other on the basis of each other's equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.

Robert A. Heinlein

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

Rick Allen

Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.

Thomas Szasz

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

Tanith Lee

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.

Swami Vivekananda

We are all the time, from our childhood, trying to lay the blame upon something outside ourselves. We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.

Rumi

Once you conquer your selfish self, all your darkness will change to light.

Tom Peters

The selfish leader will attempt to lead others for their own gain and for the detriment of others.

Thomas Merton

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.

Tony Dorsett

Tragedies make you realize how selfish you are.

Tom Waits

I admit that I ain't no angel, I admit that I ain't no saint-- I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they're so hard to find...

Stephen Hawking

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.

Stendhal

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

Stendhal

Our true passions are selfish.

Shirley Jackson

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.

Steven Pressfield

For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.