What Is Selfish Quotes

#1. International war is the sum total of millions of individual wars, raging in the minds of the people, between what is selfish and what is selfless. To the extent that you and I develop selflessness in our own hearts, to that extent we contribute to peace in our family, community, country, and world.

Eknath Easwaran

#2. Forgiveness is selfish. We give it not because it's earned, but because it's what we need. To find peace. To be whole.

Emma Chase

#3. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

J.M. Barrie

#4. The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can't bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can't absorb a few blows, it wasn't worth anything in the first place.

Ryan Holiday

#5. This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you're just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I suppose to do with that information? Just tell me that.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#6. I have two choices in life: I either try to do the right thing and get accused of being selfish, or I just do what is right for me and get called selfish anyway. This time, it's all about me.

Dawn O'Porter

#7. We must honor our worthiness in order to receive what we want. In our society we are conditioned to believe that we are not worthy, and that it is even selfish to want to be able to attract things into our lives.

Wayne Dyer

#8. Selfishness is never so exquisitely selfish as when it is on its knees ... Self turns what would otherwise be a pure and powerful prayer into a weak and ineffective one.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#9. Learning to not be selfish is what has changed in me the most since being married.

Blake Shelton

#10. My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.

Andrew Weil

#11. But the fact is," I continued, "that despite their sadness, and despite my guilt, and despite Egan's anger, I went ahead and did what I needed to do for myself. In the end, it's selfish.

Kate Mulgrew

#12. I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!

Jim Crace

#13. 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.

Stephenie Meyer

#14. People always tend to chose what is best for them. They pretend to be unselfish, all so that they can feel good about themselves. Even that really is a selfish decision.

Cheon Eunbi

#15. My co-stars call me selfish. They say, 'You are only interested in yourself and what you are only interested is yourself and what you are doing in front of the camera.' I reply, 'I can't help it; it's what got me where I am.'

Kareena Kapoor Khan

#16. We're often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there's a God - and I believe there is - that God is there to help. That's what God's job is.

Anne Lamott

#17. To talk only about national security, national defense, means to be selfish, ambitious. It is discrimination, isolation. "It is just me. What do I care about others?"

Evo Morales

#18. A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends (without deliberately trying to harm anyone else) will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be.

Stuart Kauffman

#19. What's going on? Not much. My mother's falling to pieces, my sister is a selfish bitch and my father's committing slow suicide for sake of his kingdom. That's all.

Karen Miller

#20. What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a gene that makes organisms sacrifice themselves for other organisms under the influence of selfish genes.

Richard Dawkins

#21. I now know that deep within the human concept is something dark, selfish, and completely willing to do whatever is necessary to support the idea of humanity. Because that's what it is, an idea. True humanity would never behave as we have behaved.

Melissa West

#22. I think what's most fun is playing someone who's sort of selfish and in a lot of ways unlikeable, but there's this really big heart underneath it that you get little glimpses of.

David Walton

#23. Do not say I use what is mine: you use what is alien to you; the indulgent, selfish use makes what is yours something alien; that is why I call it alien good, because you use it with a hardened heart and claim that it is right, that you alone live from what is yours.

John Chrysostom

#24. When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.

Henry Cloud

#25. M'ijita. That is not what it is for. And selfish reasons are almost always the wrong reasons.

Juliet Blackwell

#26. Acting a part is not always synonymous with lying; it is far often the best way of serving the truth. It is more truthful to act what we should feel if the community is to be well served rather than behave as we actually do feel in our selfish private feelings.

Elizabeth Goudge

#27. We look at death from the selfish side, like: "That guy died. Oh, it's so sad." Why is it sad? He's away from all of this bad stuff that's here on Earth. I mean, at the worst, he's just somewhere quiet, no nothing. At best, he's an angel ... or he's a spirit somewhere. What is so bad about that?

Tupac Shakur

#28. The problem is not that we don't recognize the truth when we hear it. The problem is that we don't want to recognize what the truth might mean for us if we hear it.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#29. Our marriage is grounded in the word of God. That's really it. God is the core of our marriage, and the foundation and the blueprint for it is how we live, and being open and honest and communicating, but ultimately doing what pleases God, and not in a selfish manner.

Candace Cameron Bure

#30. The main shift, you see, is from placing self at the center of our thoughts to putting others there. It is-what do you say?-a paradox that the more we can focus our thoughts on the well-being of others, the happier we become. The first one to benefit is oneself. I call this being wisely selfish.

David Michie

#31. By all means be selfish; the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all; love all; be happy; make happy. No happiness is greater.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

#32. The worst thing about this illness isn't the things it makes me believe, or what it makes me do. It's not the control that it has over me, or even the control it's allowed other people to take.
Worse than all of that is how I have become selfish.

Nathan Filer

#33. My big problem with corporate structure is this bizarre sense of loyalty you're supposed to feel
towards what is basically a virus. It grows or dies, like any virus. And you use it for your own selfish ends. - source

Thom Yorke

#34. If the people are to be the final tribunal then they must vote for what is right rather than according to their own selfish interests, else we are treading the path of danger.

Henry Latham Doherty

#35. What is Above is Within ... the Circumference is Winthin, Without is formed the Selfish Center, and the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity.

William Blake

#36. What passes for love is imperfect knowledge. Not knowing, initially, allows faithlessness to dress up as its opposite; casts the inarticulate as enigmatic, the selfish as forgetful, the angry as impassioned.

Nick Laird

#37. It's simple. Mankind is a sorry excuse for living creatures. They are cruel, cold, merciless, selfish, heartless, wasteful, greedy, and destructive. But the list goes on. I can spend all night telling you what's wrong with them, but why bother?

Charles Lee

#38. I know people think suicide is selfish, and maybe sometimes it really is. But what happened to Kai was beyond what anyone should have to cope with. I didn't blame him, not really. It just broke my heart that I wasn't enough to keep him here.

Cat Clarke

#39. What's the use of healing, if the life that's saved is callow and selfish and ruled by fear? There's a difference between being in sanctuary and being in hiding.

Louise Penny

#40. If believing in yourself and going after what you want in life and realising your worth is ruthless and selfish, then I'm definitely ruthless and selfish.

Nicole Scherzinger

#41. When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.

Mike Birbiglia

#42. Prayer is not the cunning art of using God, subjecting Him to one's selfish ends in an effort to get out of Him what you want.

F. Huegel

#43. I want to be an NBA all-star and help my team win. That's what it's all about, is winning. I'm a competitor ... People said a lot about me being selfish and stuff like that. Getting into the league, I can't wait to shut that down. I'm a guy who wants to play and to win and love my teammates.

Shabazz Muhammad

#44. Your expectations of other people should never be greater than what you expect of God. Why is it that you can patiently wait for him to make your life better, but you won't consider he is patiently waiting for you to be better?

Shannon L. Alder

#45. Still what I miss most, simple and maybe selfish as it sounds, is the twinkle in Morrie's eyes when I came in the room. But When someone is happy-genuninely happy-to see you, it melts you from the start. It is like going home.

Mitch Albom

#46. 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.

Eric Hoffer

#47. You can only hold on to something for so long and enjoy it just by yourself, what's the point? It's very selfish. For better or for worse, I feel like the point of all of this is to make someone feel something.

Frank Iero

#48. What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.

John Fowles

#49. because it is selfish to ask for more than what you already have.

Jay McLean

#50. Chaos is impatient. It's random. And above all it's selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want.

Rick Riordan

#51. You are the patient one, Mademoiselle,' said Poirot to Miss Debenham.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. 'What else can one do?'
You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.'
That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.

Agatha Christie

#52. I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.

Harry Belafonte

#53. No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

Julia Cameron

#54. Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior

C.S. Lewis

#55. Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

#56. And this is my most selfish thought, that if I lose the people I love what is left of my own life will consist only of grief.

Abigail Thomas

#57. The forces are there, we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be.

Unknown

#58. You wanted to live," he says.
"You say that like it's a good thing. A virtue."
"What is it really?"
I think about this. "Selfish."
"Wanting to live is selfish?"
"Yes.

Stephanie Kuehn

#59. Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

Dean Koontz

#60. Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

Stephen Colbert

#61. Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, 'On the Knowledge of Character' (1822)

Alan Bennett

#62. It's dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak and we both know you don't mean what you say. It's pure selfishness that you want to keep me here.

Rachel Caine

#63. You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract.

Wayne Dyer

#64. If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

Woodrow Wilson

#65. The world today speaks a great deal about love, and it is sought by many. But the pure love of Christ differs greatly from what the world thinks of love. Charity never seeks selfish gratification. The pure love of Christ seeks only the eternal growth and joy of others.

Ezra Taft Benson

#66. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first.

Cheryl Strayed

#67. Pat has been instrumental in what we've done here so far and the most selfish thing for me is that I want to see what we've done placed in the hands of the most competent person, and that's Pat. No one would come close to being able to continue to build on what we've done here so far like he will.

Bobby Knight

#68. In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

George Bernard Shaw

#69. I've always thought that was the lamest argument - that we need some people to be poor in order to remind the rest of us to be grateful. All that really means is that someone has to suffer poverty so other people can feel better about themselves. What a selfish way to look at the world.

Josephine Angelini

#70. For Astrid, no matter what challenges they go through, they are going to face each other. It's hard for a daughter to accept that her mother is that selfish and that terrible.

Alison Lohman

#71. What I envy is not their skin but their insouciance. I envy the freedom to sin with only a little bit of consequence, to commit one selfish act and not have it mean the downfall of my entire people. Where indecency and mischief do not mean annihilation.

Kaitlyn Greenidge

#72. I don't give a damn about power and money per se. Really, I don't. I may be a selfish bastard, but I'm incredibly cool about shit like that. I could be a Zen saint. The one thing I do have, though, is curiosity. I want to see what I can do out there in the big, tough world.

Haruki Murakami

#73. Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; Influences circle him on all sides, and yet must he answer for his actions: For the being that is master of himself, bendeth events to his will, But a slave to selfish passions is the wavering creature of circumstance.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

#74. It may be a brief interruption - just a few seconds - but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency.' Don't be so damn selfish.

Brad Pitt

#75. You carry about in your own selfish world completely oblivious to the things that really upset me and then wonder what it is you've done wrong.

Mike Gayle

#76. Selfish hedonism is not a pejorative. It is a description - an exactly accurate description of what is involved in homosexual relations.

Alan Keyes

#77. I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it.

Emmanuelle Beart

#78. Lawrence is the supreme poet of Eros. No recriminations, no reproaches, no guilt, no 'morality'. For what's 'morality' but a leash around the neck? A noose? What's 'morality' but what other people want you to do, for their own, selfish, unstated purposes?

Joyce Carol Oates

#79. When we start to talk about gurus, we're talking about beings who actually know what this is all about. They know who we were, where we came from, and where we're going. They are not imprisoned in a selfish or self-centered view of the universe.

Krishna Das

#80. I think you're being selfish." "What do you mean, selfish?" Wally asked. "A war is for your country, it's serving your country!" "To you, it's an adventure," Candy said. "That's what's selfish about it.

John Irving

#81. I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.

Jeanette Winterson

#82. The worst thing people ever say is that 'I can't afford to have kids!' It's selfish, and what infuriates me is when people say they can't do stuff they like go on holidays and buy cars when they have kids. You can - you find the money, you've just got to work harder for it.

Tamer Hassan

#83. One of the most important lessons I've recently learned? I have to move forward without that apology. Waiting on it has bound me to an anchor that is pulling me under. What would make the other person apologize for hurting me when they're far too selfish to notice they have?

Paula Heller Garland

#84. It is one thing when the culture doesn't "get" adoption. What else could one expect when all of life is seen as the quest of "selfish genes" for survival? It is one thing when the culture doesn't "get" adoption and so speaks of buying a cat as "adopting" a pet.

Russell D. Moore

#85. Good" is what helps us or at least does not hinder. "Evil" is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

#86. Teen age is so delicate. It is sensitive. We tend to do something good for other, we fail. We opt to being selfish, we fail. We mostly regret fro what we do and what we don't.

Bhavik Sarkhedi

#87. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

Herbert Spencer

#88. In some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise.

Jimenez Lai

#89. A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.

George Eliot

#90. Humans are the killers of magic, you see.....People can be cruel, unkind, mean, selfish. We can be a great many dreadful thing, and at one time or another we are all guilty of bad behavior. What we fail to realize is that we are the only ones who can do such things.

Patrick Carman

#91. Love is just a word we use to describe what boils down to a selfish and temporary state of happiness.

Sara Zarr

#92. Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself.

Aleister Crowley