"Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness."
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Selfishness quotes
Selfishness
302 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Selfishness quotes (page 3 of 16)
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"Maternity is on the face of it an unsociable experience. The selfishness that a woman has learned to stifle or to dissemble where she alone is concerned, blooms freely and unashamed on behalf of her offspring."
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"That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill."
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"Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness."
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"The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries."
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"It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates."
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"The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence."
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"Without the help of selfishness, the human animal would never have developed. Egoism is the vine by which man hoisted himself out of the swamp and escaped from the jungle."
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"How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness."
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"Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love."
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"Selfishness in art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home."
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"It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself."
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"Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion."
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"We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy."
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"In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me."
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"Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation."
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"What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?"
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"PERSONAL IMPORTANCE or taking things personally, is an expression of SELFISHNESS because we make the assumption that everything is about ME!! NOTHING PEOPLE DO IS BECAUSE OF YOU!! IT'S BECAUSE OF THEMSELVES!!"
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"Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness."
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"We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition."
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