Top 100 Quotes About Altruism
#1. Altruism is the surest and most effective way to bring about genuine life satisfaction.
Dalai Lama XIV
#2. I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.
Aneurin Bevan
#3. All religion teaches the virtues of love, altruism and patience, while showing us how to discipline and transform ourselves to achieve inner peace and a kind heart. Therefore, they are worthy of our respect.
Dalai Lama
#4. There's a lot of evidence in evolutionary sciences that show that altruism and acting in ways that are empathetic to others are actually beneficial on an evolutionary basis.
Neill Blomkamp
#5. When abandoned women follow their fleeing males with tear-stained faces, screaming you can't do this to me, they reveal that all that they have offered in the name of generosity and altruism has been part of an assumed transaction, in which they were entitled to a certain payoff.
Germaine Greer
#6. The biggest pests are the people who use altruism as an alibi. What they passionately wish is to make themselves important.
Isabel Paterson
#7. At its strongest and wildest and most authentic, love is a demon. It is a religion, a high-risk adventure, an act of heroism. Love is ecstasy and injury, transcendence and danger, altruism and excess. In many ways, it is a divine madness.
Cristina Nehring
#8. No country or continent can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself and this is the risk that the countries of Europe run through misguided altruism.
Tony Abbott
#9. I've never been terribly interested in why people give, because their motivation is rarely what it seems to be, and it's almost never true altruism.
Donald J. Trump
#10. Altruism is written in everlasting and resplendent character on the Cross of Christ, and it was at Calvary that the centre of life was shifted from selfishness to sacrifice.
Jon Weber
#11. Whatever they say about it, but being altruistic is not so simple for everyone. Not to look and sound like despotism, altruism must be learnt, and it's a long way, which in fact begins from our egoism, for really, a human can't love others if he doesn't love himself first.
Lara Biyuts
#12. The altruism of foresters can serve as a motto for humanity in general: "We reap what we have not sown. We sow what we do not reap."
Leo Errera
#13. Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
Robert A. Heinlein
#14. Altruism is like rings in the water when you toss a pebble. At first the circles are very small, then they get larger, and finally they embrace the entire surface of the ocean. - ALEXANDRE JOLLIEN
Matthieu Ricard
#15. The most popular form of altruism is giving to others the advice you cannot use yourself.
Evan Esar
#16. I think there is a level of altruism that wants to help fellow human beings.
Frank Grillo
#17. Loving others is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. Altruism that rewards one's self.
Allan Lokos
#18. That men, in reality, did not have friends in other men. That the fellowship of men, despite its joyous banter, old memories of exaggerated mischief and the altruism of sharing pornography, was actually a farcical fellowship. Because what a man really wanted was to be bigger than his friends.
Manu Joseph
#19. All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone
my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music
ensemble music, not soloism
we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
#20. I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.
B.F. Skinner
#21. 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.
Richard Dawkins
#22. Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?
Lewis Thomas
#23. The shortest path to success in art, if I could put it into words, is altruism, but if you don't care about anything in the world, and even get angry at people that show you the truth, how can you be altruistic?
Daniel Marques
#24. Adopting a child is a blessing. Those who perceive themselves as "doing someone a favor" are not ready to adopt. Pity is such an insult. When making a lifetime commitment to someone, it's no time to let guilt or excessive altruism take over.
William R. Cutrer
#25. The believer feels a compulsion to act far beyond basic altruism, and that defies explanation.
Devorah Kalani
#26. Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.
Carl Sagan
#27. Before Darwin, our world was very religious. People saw altruism as something given by God for us to be good so that we could go to Paradise.
Isabella Rossellini
#28. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
Ayn Rand
#30. The full humanization of man requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism.
Erich Fromm
#31. Which is more subversive-and corrosive-to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.
Frank Prochaska
#32. Don't mistake any of this for altruism ... Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better.
Larry Ellison
#33. Altruism, a jargon word for what used to be called love, is worse than weakness, it is sin, a violation of nature. Be seperate. Do not be a social animal.
Lewis Thomas
#34. To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless ... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
#35. There are very dark times when even basic human altruism must be an intentional act of rebellion.
--I Am Fire and Air
William Anthony
#36. Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter.
Raymond E. Feist
#38. In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.
John Buchanan Robinson
#39. Real love is not based on attachment, but on altruism. In this case, your compassion will remain as a humane response to suffering as long as beings continue to suffer.
Dalai Lama
#40. Psychology has falsified love as surrender and altruism, while it is an appropriation or a bestowal following from a super-abundance of personality. Only the most complete persons can love. The depersonalized and objective are the worst lovers.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#41. Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.
Nicholson Baker
#42. Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.
Jonathan Sacks
#43. Idealistic as it may sound, altruism should be the driving force in business, not just competition and a desire for wealth.
Dalai Lama XIV
#44. We do not have to make self-sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.
Peter Singer
#45. Altruism is not a moral or religious ideal, no matter what some people might tell you, it is an essential biological part of who or what we are as a species.
Bill Nye
#46. altruism by any other name is still altruism, fueled by many different motivations.
Andrew E. Kaufman
#47. Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.
Samantha Power
#48. That doesn't mean they're not still angling for something. The most charitable people in the world are choosing altruism, not because it's a noble endeavor, but because being noble fulfills a need within them.
Lindsay Buroker
#49. Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.
Alan Dershowitz
#50. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#52. Whenever I see people getting a bad deal I want to step in and do something about it. Of course, this is not pure altruism - there's a profit to be made too.
Richard Branson
#53. Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time.
Robert A. Heinlein
#54. Altruism is the kind of pie best eaten with a lot of gravy and little inspection of the kind of kidney it's stuffed with.
M T Anderson
#55. Altruism eventuates in all realities, else self-destruction consumes it.
Guy Lozier
#56. In a family or other small group, altruism prevails, but the farther away a person gets from an individual, the less altruistic he or she behaves toward them.
Mary Pilon
#57. The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
Dalai Lama
#58. The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
Alison Gopnik
#59. Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
E. O. Wilson
#61. You're not exactly up for the Humanitarian of the Year award, so save your altruism for someone who can't see through you like cellophane.
Rebecca McNutt
#62. That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules.
Mike Carey
#63. [Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.
Ayn Rand
#64. Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.
Gore Vidal
#65. Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfilment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work.
Matthieu Ricard
#66. Altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.
Christina Stead
#67. Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.
Marcel Proust
#68. Selfishness is not a virtue. Altruism is not a moral weakness. Taxation is the price we pay for civilization.
Darryl Cunningham
#69. If being a saint is complete devotion to a cause, bravery and altruism, then I think Mrs Sendlerowa fulfils all the conditions.I think about her the way you think about someone you owe your life to.
Irena Sendler
#70. Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.
Lewis Thomas
#71. Altruism is the root of all Wickedness
Andrew Ryan
#72. Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better.
Henry Spencer
#73. The ultimate altruism is nothing but the sacrifice of one's self for the benefit of others. Love yourself but never forget to be altruistic to others in need.
Debasish Mridha
#74. Social motherliness has made women's struggle for liberty the loveliest synthesis of egoism and altruism.
Ellen Key
#75. Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
Thomas Nagel
#76. It is infinitely better to rely on the pursuit of economic interest by landowners or street companies than to depend on the dubious "altruism" of bureaucrats and government officials.
Murray N. Rothbard
#77. The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social.
Margaret Mead
#78. Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.
Greg Bear
#79. Infinite altruism is the basis of peace and happiness. If you want altruism, you must control hate and you must practice patience. The main teachers of patience are our enemies.
Dalai Lama
#80. Altruism raises your mood because it raises your self-esteem, which increases happiness. Plus, giving to others gets you outside of yourself and distracts you from your problems.
Karen Salmansohn
#81. The sun of truth rises in the human being and illuminates his world when he lifts his mind from the darkness of ignorance and selfishness into the light of wisdom and altruism
Samael Aun Weor
#82. We need to build websites with celebrity speakers who talk about the ideals of fairness, sharing, democratic cooperation, and altruism in public life.
Deepak Chopra
#83. Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed, genetic manipulation will not succeed.
Gina Maranto
#84. The dignity we create in the time allotted to us becomes a continuum with the dignity we achieve by the altruism of accepting the necessity of death.
Sherwin B. Nuland
#85. I had always thought that the 'good,' and the 'bad' and the 'violent' did not exist in any absolute, essential sense. It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives in the setting of a Western. An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference.
Sergio Leone
#86. Empathy, as we have seen, leads to caring, altruism, and compassion. Seeing things from another's perspective breaks down biased stereotypes, and so breeds tolerance and acceptance of differences.
Daniel Goleman
#88. Compassion, along with love, is the face of altruism.
Dalai Lama
#89. Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales.
David Mixner
#90. For many years, I tried to make New Year's resolutions. I made lists and shot for great heights: I would show altruism and exert moral strength, patience and all those other great attributes.
Henry Rollins
#91. Social Science ... led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.
David Riesman
#92. The person who works for recognition devalues the work he does, that awards are first and foremost political instruments, that altruism's true name is always Anonymous.
David Marusek
#93. There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.
Peter Singer
#94. She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)
William F. Buckley Jr.
#95. Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.
David Rakoff
#96. If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.
Richard Dawkins
#97. The collective delusion here is overwhelming narcissism posing as altruism.
David Rakoff
#98. Will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?
Peter Singer
#99. 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.
Stephen Colbert
#100. Altruism is the best source of happiness. There is no doubt about that.
Dalai Lama
