Selfishness Quotes

“Is selfishness a necessary ingredient in the composition of that passion called love, or does it deserve all the fine things which poets, in the exercise of their undoubted vocation, have said of it?”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

“An investment in myself that ends with myself is the secret to bankruptcy.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get what he can for himself.”
― Calvin Coolidge, Have Faith In Massachusetts

“There is no place where greed has walked where it did not leave regret in its wake.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“She leaned back in her chair and raised her face to the sun, mildly intoxicated, not so much by the wine as by the scope of this important argument. Seduced, also, by the possibility that she might please herself, simply by wishing it so. As a devil's advocate, he was flawless. And yet, she knew, there was a flaw in his reasoning, just as there was a flaw in his ability to feel.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“You've got to be extremely selfish, to be happy without human company.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them—hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people.

In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I think people are what they are, whether you're talking about now or two thousand years ago. We find ourselves in different
circumstances or dealing with different kind of people and that make it
seem like humanity as whole has changed, but we are all one species Mr Sam, and there's no reason to believe that we change that much within a single lifetime.

My suggestion would be to broaden your social circle there are plenty of good people out there ( as well as bad ones ) your current view is probably the function of your current circumstances. Broaden your social circle Son.”
― Sammy Yobe Lingwalanya

“Maybe the greatest gift that we could give ourselves is to rid ourselves of all of the things that we have gifted ourselves.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“A selfless lover and a selfish lover will never be happy together.”
― Garima Soni - words world

“The peace of men is nothing than a hesitant and brittle calm under which burns coals constantly stoked and ever-stirred by agitated and self-serving men. And this ease which we call ‘peace’ is destined to erupt in flames that call men of peace to the perilous task of extinguishing those flames yet again. Yet the nature of mankind is such that the coals remain and the stoking and stirring continue. For the Prince of Peace is the only One who can stoke and stir the hearts of men away from the violence of self-serving agendas to obedience to God and the service of others. And a fire such as this kindles the greatest peace imaginable.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Despite all the lily-white publicity campaigns in the world, as long as people existed, the breeding grounds of sin and selfishness would exist. That was the price of being born human.”
― Rieko Yoshihara, Ai no Kusabi Vol. 2: Destiny

“the threat today is not western religions, but psychology and consumerism. is the Dharma becoming another psychotherapy, another commodity to be bought and sold? will western Buddhism become all too compatible with our individualistic consumption patterns, with expensive retreats and initiations, catering to overstressed converts, eager to pursue their own enlightenment? let’s hope not, because Buddhism and the west need each other. despite its economic and technologic dynamism, western civilisation and its globalisation are in trouble, which means all of us are in trouble. the most obvious example is our inability to respond to accelerating climate change, as seriously as it requires. if humanity is to survive and thrive over the next few centuries, there is no need to go on at length here about the other social and ecological crisis that confront us now, which are increasingly difficult to ignore [many of those are considered in the following chapters]. it’s also becoming harder to overlook the fact that the political and economic systems we’re so proud of seem unable to address these problems. one must ask, is that because they themselves are the problem? part of the problem is leadership, or the lack of it, but we can’t simply blame our rulers. it’s not only the lack of a moral core of those who rise to the top, or the institutional defamations that massage their rise, economical and political elites, and there’s not much difference between them anymore. like the rest of us, they are in need of a new vision of possibility, what it means to be human, why we tend to get into trouble, and how we can get out go it, those who benefit the most from the present social arrangements may think of themselves as hardheaded realists, but as self-conscious human beings, we remain motivated by some such vision, weather we’re aware of it or not, as why we love war, points out. even secular modernity is based on a spiritual worldview, unfortunately a deficient one, from a Buddhist perspective.”
― David R. Loy, Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution

“we need to stop evading the emptiness at our core and realise its true nature - lack of money, the great seduction”
― David R. Loy, Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution

“political order, and political decay, presciently drawing attention to perceived faultlines in American society. the American political system has decayed over time because its traditional system of cheques and balances has deepened and become incessantly rigid. with sharp political polarisation, this decentralised system is less and less able to represent majority interests, but gives excessive representation to the views of interest groups and activist organisations that collectively do not add up to a sovereign American people.”
― Stephen D. King, Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History

“সমস্ত সম্পর্কই স্বার্থের শৃঙ্খলে বাঁধা। সেখানে এতটুকু টান পড়লেই কর্কশ শব্দ বেজে উঠবে।”
― Ashapurna Devi, Dashti Upanyas

“cCvilized?

Please.

Like we no longer
claw and scavenge and sift
through the shit.
Like we aren't vultures
pretending to be lions.
Like we aren't savages
with self-made crowns.”
― L.E. Bowman

“It’s quiet for a second and so I start to think. About how people take from each other. They take and take. Our world itself is a great big taking. And life is just giving. We give away everything we have, one day at a time, until we can’t give no more.

I guess that’s the price of living.”
― Daniel H. Wilson, A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers

“Detours are paths to regret.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“He is almost surprised to see that she is beginning to cry. He has never seen her cry, and it has always been rare that she ever displayed emotion. She was always cold and callous. She was always strong. He feels guilt for bringing her, a woman, to tears.”
― Gage Chrisman

“Selfishness consumes everything around us until nothing remains, including ourselves.”
― John K. Slater, God's Love Manual: A How-to Guide for Building Successful Relationships

“To constantly edit our ethics in order to keep pace with our preferences is to edit ethics that don’t exist in order to accommodate preferences that will never be satisfied.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The Carnivore (Sonnet 1406)

Be a gentle giant like the elephant,
not an opportunistic carnivore like the wolf.
The elephant doesn't harm anyone
to prove its greatness, while the wolf
doesn't think twice to devour another wolf.

Greatness unfolds through gentleness,
Illumination unfolds through expansion.
Coldness is the mark of cowardly animal,
Cruelty is cover for beastly degeneration.

Worst of all carnivores are the humans,
There is no end to their appetite.
Animals no longer partake once they are full,
While human greed knows no sane height.

More clothes, more cars, more cash,
Just how much will you consider enough!
Till you put a cork on cocky abundance,
Not felicity but disparity wreaks havoc.

Savagest carnivore of all is the human.
Uncorked materialism is new cannibalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Be a gentle giant like the elephant, not an opportunistic carnivore like the wolf. The elephant doesn't harm anyone to prove its greatness, while the wolf doesn't think twice to devour another wolf.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Worst of all carnivores are the humans,
There is no end to their appetite.
Animals no longer partake once they are full,
While human greed knows no sane height.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“When everything you have experienced, everything you know, every circumstance, every place, every person around you, has ALWAYS been wrong... Then the one who is wrong is you!”
― Jasmina Alexander

“You’re allowed to be a little selfish. Just don’t be so selfish that all you think about is you; think about yourself just enough to know how to think about other people.”
― Anonymous

“Art helps us to reconnect with the deepest core of our being, reminding us that there is something greater than ourselves.

I believe that any art form should help liberate us, not chain us tighter to our egoic sense of Self.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Selfishness is death by consumption of self.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“... many Boomers exert unhelpful and unhealthy levels of control over everyone around them. The Boomers’ parents, the generation that went through war, recession and global pandemic, described their own children as selfish. And in a way, it’s the most selfish act of all, to control people as if they’re chess pieces on a board and will stay where you place them.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir