Top 90 Quotes About Altruistic
#1. 'The Portrait of Dorian Grey' beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.
Walton Goggins
#2. Sometimes I am fascinated by the power of the human brain. Our human heart can produce such an altruistic state of mind, one that can hold others more dear than oneself. These things are really remarkable.
Dalai Lama XIV
#3. The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.
James T. Shotwell
#4. The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.
Jo Brand
#5. Politics is brutal because it engages the most fundamental human impulses for affection, honor, power, and fame. Great principles and grand visions are ennobling, but at its best politics is an imperfect means to an altruistic end.
Jon Meacham
#6. Control Master Theory suggests that our psychological problems come about in much the same way: our decision to make ourselves unhappy because one or both of our parents were unhappy is just as altruistic as our friend's decision to run through flames to save his daughter.
Lewis Engel
#7. It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.
Max Weber
#8. Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.
Richard Dawkins
#9. 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
#10. He himself didn't see it as exceptionally altruistic, because he had understood one can't be truly happy in isolation or, worse, among unhappy people. The best protection against danger, unhappiness and the sordidness of human existence is to be surrounded by people who love you.
Andrew Ashling
#11. Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth. They are creative, altruistic and kind.
Ingrid Newkirk
#12. If the Olympic Games ever served a true altruistic purpose, they have long since outlived it. Yeah, the pursuit of athletic excellence, sportsmanship and international goodwill is plenty noble. But the modern Olympics are at best a vehicle for agitprop; at worst, a scandal magnet.
John Ridley
#13. Two of the behaviors that set early humans apart were the systematic sharing of food and altruistic group defense. Other primates did very little of either but, increasingly, hominids did, and those behaviors helped set them on an evolutionary path that produced the modern world.
Sebastian Junger
#14. It seems counterintuitive, but the more altruistic your attitude, the more benefits you will gain from the relationship," writes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. "If you set out to help others," he explains, "you will rapidly reinforce your own reputation and expand your universe of possibilities.
Adam M. Grant
#15. Purely altruistic behavior is pretty much impossible because of the selfish pleasures we derive from it.
Nicholas Kristof
#16. Either the conscious intellect is impotent, or is not sufficiently strong, or is not the factor positively connected with altruistic phenomenon generally or their sublime form particularly.
Pitirim Sorokin
#19. 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
#20. If tempted by something that feels "altruistic," examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!
Robert A. Heinlein
#21. Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens.
Gretchen Rubin
#22. Gorillas are almost altruistic in nature. There's very little if any 'me-itis.' When I get back to civilization, I'm always appalled by 'me, me, me.'
Dian Fossey
#23. I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.
George Bernard Shaw
#24. 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
#25. The strangest of all the doctrines of the cult of competition, in which admittedly there must be losers as well as winners, is that the result of competition is inevitably good for everybody, that altruistic ends may be met by a system without altruistic motives or altruistic means.
Wendell Berry
#26. I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.
Michael Shermer
#27. Spiritual awakening is exactly dropping the sense of one's narrow separateness; it is essentially and profoundly altruistic.
Norman Fischer
#28. If I can change the world at least 1% to peace, truth and altruistic lovingkindness through my writing, my life will not have been meaningless and lost to the nothingness of time.
Mark F. Kalita
#29. We benefit from doing nothing, from going out to play, from giving from the heart and spending time in nature. Most of all we benefit from having healthy, strong, and loving relationships with other people and from exercising the altruistic parts of ourselves.
Jo Ann Davis
#30. Free markets and capitalism are predicated upon the definition of greed as altruistic in economics".
~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
#31. 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
#32. Nobody else in the world can do what we can do. And nobody else is willing to do it for altruistic reasons. I mean, we don't go into places like Iraq to grab their oil or colonize their country. We go there to deliver, as George W. Bush said, the blessings of liberty.
John Cornyn
#33. There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.
Jodi Picoult
#34. The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers. In general, people like that are going to be more progressive, more open minded, a little more altruistic.
Adam McKay
#35. It was strange the paths the human heart chose to take and the attachments it made along the way. The surest sign of the altruistic nature of the organ is its ability to ignore race, color, creed, and gender and just blindly love with all its might - one of the most irrefutable forces on earth. They
Craig Johnson
#36. 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
#37. Great compassion is the root of altruistic action, the object of amazement to the world;there is no greater source of help and happiness.
Dalai Lama XIV
#38. I'm not totally altruistic. I've always had great career ambitions. But it has to come out in an organic way. If you push yourself out beyond where you are supposed to be, there's this pressure.
David Friedman
#39. While profit remains the final goal, entrepreneurs spend the better part of each day figuring out how better to serve the needs of their actual and potential customers. They are operationally, if not intentionally, altruistic.
Dinesh D'Souza
#40. I should also give some space to Amotz Zahavi's idea that altruistic donation might be a 'Potlatch' style of dominance signal: see how superior to you I am, I can afford to make a donation to you!
Richard Dawkins
#41. When we are bad, we are worse than any primate that I know. And when we are good, we are actually better and more altruistic than any primate that I know.
Frans De Waal
#42. The event of falling in love ... in one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being.
C.S. Lewis
#43. He wasn't certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize.
Patti Smith
#44. The Moralization Gap is part of a larger phenomenon called self-serving biases. People try to look good. "Good" can mean effective, potent, desirable, and competent, or it can mean virtuous, honest, generous, and altruistic.
Steven Pinker
#45. The hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it.
Max Beerbohm
#46. We fail to reckon with the reality of human nature. By nature,we are egocentric. Our world revolves around us. None of us is totally altruistic.
Gary Chapman
#47. One of the things I realized ... is how few success stories there are in websites or products or businesses that exist primarily for an altruistic purpose.
Andrew Mason
#48. Being altruistic not only helps us to benefit others, but it is also the most satisfying way to live.
Matthieu Ricard
#49. I wasn't exactly sure that getting someone a job as a porn star was completely altruistic. But maybe I was being judgemental.
Marshall Thornton
#51. The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.
Rebecca Solnit
#53. People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic.They have some issue. They have some interest.It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.
David Brooks
#54. 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
#55. While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it's vastly overrated, it's frequently unnecessary, and it's messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.
Quentin Crisp
#56. Genes are selfish,3 selfish genes create people with various mental modules, and some of these mental modules make us strategically altruistic, not reliably or universally altruistic.
Jonathan Haidt
#57. The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives - altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter.
Richard J. Foster
#58. 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 Jencks
#59. Our altruistic mind is the key to our happiness as individuals, families, nations, and as an international community.
Dalai Lama XIV
#60. Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance
Robert A. Heinlein
#61. Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?
Arthur C. Clarke
#62. Maybe a life of devotion doesn't need to be robes and chanting; maybe it's just going through life with open eyes and an open mind, looking out for chances to help people and buzz on the altruistic zip it gives, like coins in Mario Land.
Russell Brand
#63. Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
David Sloan Wilson
#64. Yes, but I am not human and to expect me to live by your rules or values is unrealistic. For my kind, I am quite altruistic." Tyler Jones/Dhavenbahtek to Thulu and La Fi.
Maer Wilson
#65. Consider the perverse effect cap and trade has on altruistic actions. Say you decide to buy a small, high-efficiency car. That reduces your emissions, but not your country's. Instead it allows somebody else to buy a bigger S.U.V. - because the total emissions are set by the cap.
James Hansen
#66. But there is something delusional nonetheless in his optimistic certainty that human beings will wish to choose altruistic values without invoking transcendent principles. They may do so; but they may also wish to build death camps, and may very well choose to do that instead. For
David Bentley Hart
#67. I had hoped to hear everyone discussing how much they missed my altruistic qualities, my legendary skills as a fighter and as a lover." He leered. "Instead, you're making plans for tomorrow. Interesting how life goes on in spite of itself.
Maria V. Snyder
#68. Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires
Bertrand Russell
#69. We are animals, yet are expected to be so much more. Although honor requires us to make altruistic decisions, even acting for the benefit of other people keeps coming back to self-interest, no matter how much one attempts to conceal it.
Brian Herbert
#70. Evolutionary psychology tells us that men, especially powerful men, feel invincible and entitled to spread their seed, and that women can't resist the scent of masculine power. Women, by contrast, are said to be more altruistic and collaborative, seeking power so that they can share it with others.
Hanna Rosin
#71. The Socialist system requires that each individual act out of selfless, altruistic motives. It sounds nice, but the only way that could happen is if Man were innately centered on others.
Mark David Henderson
#72. He had a sudden awareness of what a wonderful organization the Weapon Makers were, with their shops existing In tens of thousands of cities and towns in the far-flung Isher Empire, an independent, outlawed, indestructible, altruistic, opposition to tyranny.
A.E. Van Vogt
#73. It is . . . a melancholy fact that the countries which are most humanitarian, which are most interested in internal improvement, tend to grow weaker compared with the other countries which possess a less altruistic civilization . .
Henry Kissinger
#74. Control Master Theory proposes that most psychological problems are the result of our altruistic impulses run amok.
Lewis Engel
#75. Dudjom Rinpoche has said, "The point of patience is to train so that our altruistic attitude is immovable and irrepressible in the face of those who hurt us with their ingratitude and so forth.
Lodro Rinzler
#76. Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers.
Steven D. Levitt
#77. There is nothing selfish about enjoying yourself. In fact, as wise people have long said and psychologists have since discovered, happiness makes people less self-focused and more altruistic.
Roger N. Walsh
#78. If you are not selfish you will not be altruistic, remember.
Osho
#79. The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.
Herbert Simon
#80. If you're lucky enough to live without want, it's a natural impulse to be altruistic to others.
Moutasem Algharati
#81. The United States doesn't do what it does in the world for altruistic reasons. Nobody set out to be the world's government.
Michael Mandelbaum
#82. 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
#83. Selfish genes actually explain altruistic individuals, and to me that's crystal-clear.
Richard Dawkins
#84. Taking faith seriously leads to the utility of altruistic behavior.
Ted Malloch
#85. Be different, be altruistic. Be strange, work for others in response to their harm. Raise eyebrows, be generous without agenda.
Tsem Tulku
#86. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.
Peter Watts
#87. Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn't anything to do with his dark side; rather it was the divide between the altruistic and forgiving Abstract Reasoning Harry, versus the frustrated and angry Harry In The Moment.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#88. As soon as I wake up I pay homage to the Buddha, and I try to prepare my mind to be more altruistic, more compassionate, during the day to come so I can be of benefit to beings. Then I do physical exersice - I walk on a treadmill.
Dalai Lama
#89. The happiest among us will be most altruistic, most distinct, most benevolent and most awkward to some of us in a way.
RKSJ
#90. We do foreign assistance for altruistic reasons, certainly for humanitarian reasons, of course. But the main reason we do foreign assistance is we do it in the American national interest.
Roger Wicker
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
