Famous Quotes & Sayings

Nikola Tesla

Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence-by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. ... So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed-only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

Mort Sahl

Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy.

John Wooden

Happiness begins when selfishness ends.

John Ruskin

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

John Ruskin

I had no companions to quarrel with, nobody to assist, and nobody to thank... the evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or non affectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with a violence utterly rampant and unmanageable.

Eric Hoffer

There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

Mortimer Adler

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.

Mortimer Adler

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.

Matthew McConaughey

I’m a fan of the word selfish. Self. Ish. When I say I have gotten a lot more self-ish, I mean I am less concerned with what people think of me. I’m not worried about how I’m perceived. Selfish has always gotten a bad rap. You should do for you.

Matt Ridley

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

You don't want to get too selfish over times. But we went out and got it done again.

Strikers are egotists, selfish. We have to be.

Roland Joffe

We're a strange animal, so often destroying what we love for selfish ends, and yet tantalized by the sense that there are other choices if only we had strength to make them. In the politics of 400 years ago, we find the same questions we battle with today.

Sonny Vaccaro

It's not uncommon in the entertainment world for agents to sign young talent. It's sinful that these players can't be represented by lawyers and agents when they're in school. If a player wants to hire someone to seek his value - in any other walk of life, except where this farcical entity that is the NCAA is involved - having a lawyer or agent isn't illegal. It's just the NCAA imposing its own set of rules. It's selfish on their part.

Mother Teresa

People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway.

Peace Pilgrim

You have endless energy only when you are working for the good of the whole - you have to stop working for your little selfish interests. That's the secret of it. In this world you are given as you give.

Peter Kreeft

Why would the apostles lie?....Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!

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.