"We know that there are chiselers. At the bottom of every case of criticism and obstruction we have found some selfish interest, some private axe to grind."
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Selfish quotes
Selfish
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Selfish quotes (page 12 of 65)
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"I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all."
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"I think I could go away tomorrow. I've already accomplished something. It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself."
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"Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification."
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"It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and to be filled with eagerness to live."
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"It is easy to be proud & harsh & selfish - so easy. But we have been created for better things."
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"Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness."
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"Is this what you have in mind,' I asked the Dalai Lama, 'when you say in teachings that the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the world are the most selfish beings of all, that by cultivating altruism they actually achieve ultimate happiness for themselves?' Yes. That's wise selfish,' he replied. 'Helping others not means we do this at our own expense. Not like this. Buddhas and bodhisattvas, these people very wise. All their lives they only want one thing: to achieve ultimate happiness. How to do this? By cultivating compassion, by cultivating altruism."
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"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."
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"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."
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"...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential."
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"Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money."
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"When it's impossible, it's better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish."
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"The best thing anyone can give to humanity is God consciousness. Then you can really give them something. But first you have to concentrate on your own spiritual advancement; so in a sense we have to become selfish to become selfless."
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"I used to love you I still do So Selfish I love the old you The you that didnt shoot drugs ...The you that didnt get beat on by men You laugh in my face and call me a fool But its true I still love you Sometimes,I can see the old you When your eyes flash When you almost look alive"
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"He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed."
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"Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything."
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"The soul lives forever by giving, not receiving. This is the grand paradox. You get most by giving most. Conversely, by receiving much you impoverish yourself. By selfish accumulation you become bankrupt."
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"In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love."
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"What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason — instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods."
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