Selfish Quotations

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.

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.

To be a tennis champion, you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed. Kind of tunnel vision almost.

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.

I am in love with girls that are bad and naughty and badass, and a little selfish, but I like to watch from a respectful distance!

There are many selfish people who are extremely original, then they take those pure ideas and use them to raise themselves up, that is an insincere move.

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.

I was given such a great gift. It's a miracle that never stops amazing me and reminding me to give thanks, every day. Having a wife and daughter gives me a lot more purpose. I was much more selfish before, but now I think about what kind of role model I'll be. I just want to be a better man.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

You'll be a good parent when you're ready to no longer be selfish. Until I was about 35, it was all about me. I look back and I'm astonished at how I lived my life - it was totally self-involved.

And books that were published in much larger numbers than Selfish, Little are hard to find. And publishers who wanted to publish my last few works have them stuck in limbo while new distribution ideas and legal issues and fears are blown away.

My son's the most precious thing to me: He's changed me from being selfish to selfless.

Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.

To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness. Though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.

It's enough to indulge and to be selfish but true happiness is really when you start giving back.

If my love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. Such a love is barter, for there is exchange of love and devotion in return for something. It is conditional love.

The Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?

Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.

I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.

I would not be a good mother. I mean, I love being an aunt to my niece and nephew. And I used to want to, like, adopt 10 kids - because I had friends who were adopted, and I thought that was the coolest thing, to be chosen. But again, my job is too selfish.

False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons.

Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive.

Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.

A woman asking 'Am I good? Am I satisfied?' is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.

I know that some of the spiritual beliefs that I have are that if I come from a place of love, and I try to get out of my ego and my desire to want more and be selfish in any shape or form, then whatever I'm doing is not good.

I know I have a successful career, a successful life. If I sit and say, 'Look, I have a comfortable life,' and I... just think about myself, I don't think that would be fair. That would be very selfish. Because everything I do in my life is to benefit my people.

I've come to the point in my life where I encourage young Native Americans to become much more selfish about their personal needs and wants.

I can say with a solid degree of authority that I am a selfish person. I spontaneously forget the names of more people than not, unless I want to make out with them. I will take the last square of toilet paper off the roll without thinking twice. I tip taxi drivers so poorly I'm amazed none of them have run over my foot while speeding off.

Sometimes you have to be selfish to be selfless.

A man's sentiments are generally just and right, while it is second selfish thought which makes him trim and adopt some other view. The best reforms are worked out when sentiment operates, as it does in women, with the indignation of righteousness.

I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you?

Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.

Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing.

Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.

Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution.

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.

My life, in some ways, has been a half-measure. I didn't commit myself all the way to my marriage and family, because I would have given up more. And I didn't go all the way with just being completely selfish. I always wonder where my career would be if I was more selfish.

It can be rebuilt if other countries with selfish interests will not meddle, as has been done in the past.

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.

I do this for the sake of myself. It's a selfish process. I don't really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

You have to be selfish to be an actor.

I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

Most of the time, the things that really change the world exist for something fundamentally selfish and then the world-changing ends up being a side-effect of that.

I'm not a person or a selfish player, but we have to move the ball more, and we have to look further the team game, because we have enough talent to use different players.

People think if you look after yourself you're being selfish, you know.

Racing is a very selfish, self-centred, self-glorifying thing. My wife's life for 14 years was centered around me. It was all about me. It was all for my ego.

From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good.

If I had children, I would be very selfish. I wouldn't be out doing things. But by not having kids, it makes me freer to travel the world and talk about things I feel are important.

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

When you go out there and do the things you're supposed to do, people view you as selfish.

Whenever I release a record, it's my record. It's not a selfish thought. I may work all year 'round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.

Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It's awful and it hurts so many people around you. It's a terribly selfish thing to do.

An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.

Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realize you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.

Sure, I have friends, plenty of friends, and they all come around wantin' to borrow money. I've always been generous with my friends and family, with money, but selfish with the important stuff like love.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

When it comes to my racing career I'm very driven and very selfish. People who are around me at races will know that I'm a different person here than in my personal life. I completely blank people at races. I need to be focused. I'm rude.

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

It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.

Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.

I change my mind so much, I'm better going on my own. Shopping is a selfish activity anyway.

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.

I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.

It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That's why we're here, after all, to help others.

I'm such a strong believer in making yourself happy. Almost in a selfish way. There are a lot of trends, and obviously you can get swept up into them. But I feel like if you just write songs you love, it can have trap beats in it or whatever's going on in the moment, but you don't stop loving songs.

I'd make a good friend, not mother. I'm too selfish. I think a lot of mothers are selfish and they end up having children, but I don't want to put some small tiny person through that.

I always felt too young and selfish to have children of my own.

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

I never got caught up in playing for history, seeing how many majors I could win, or rewriting the record books. Those are selfish objectives, and the guy who chokes usually does so because he dwells on what it all means to him. I was only worried about my family. And although I had my share of failures, it was never because I choked.

The sad thing is most people have to check with someone before they do the things that make them happy. We're all passing through; the least we can do is be happy, and the only way to do that is by being selfish.

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

I've run out of mates that haven't had a baby now. It does make me think of my parents having a family so young and the fact that I've been able to avoid it for so long. It does make me a feel a little bit selfish.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

I've dated athletes before but it's too tough because we have the same job, we deal with the same problems and both do a very selfish sport,

It's kind of selfish to say that you're only going to fight for a victory that you will live to see.

On a selfish basis, I really enjoy sports and activity.

Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish. None of those adjectives describe the Millennials I've been privileged to meet and work with.

I have a pet peeve about bands that don't play their hits. I think it's kind of selfish.

And, one thing I definitely enjoyed personally, from a selfish point of view, was exploration and going to places that I had never been to before and learning, you know, meeting the people and getting to know, new sights and sounds, etc.

I think we are living in selfish times. I'm the first one to say that I'm the most selfish. We live in the so-called 'first world,' and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy.

The only time I think about life beyond F1 is when I contemplate becoming a dad. But there's no way that's going to happen while I'm still racing. To be successful in F1 you need to be very selfish in lots of ways and you're away from home for long periods. That's not the kind of father I want to be.

Going out at night and having a fabulous social life takes a lot out of you, and I don't know if I have that much to give, honestly. I would rather give that time to my kids or spend that time reading a book or watching a film. I am selfish and lazy.

You know, we're really destroying ourselves because we're really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish.

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Creativity is very selfish. Scandalously so, in fact.