Selfish Vs Selfless Quotes & Sayings

All your stress, pain, suffering, misery is due to your attachment with it. If you don't attach with the things, that doesn't serve you, either in your internal or external life, slowly those things lose grip on you, and you release yourself from it forever. — Roshan Sharma

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. — Ayn Rand

I feel strongly that it is the selfish person who needs to change, not the selfless person. (Zhang) — Derald Wing Sue

Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything. — Shunryu Suzuki

A selfish life isn't God's purpose for you — Sunday Adelaja

But why must man suffer and sacrifice for God? At the end of his suffering and sacrifice he will find that though he began to do so for God, it has proved to be for himself. It is the foolishly selfish who is selfish, and the wisely selfish proves to be selfless. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

When it's about your life, it's time to be selfish. — Dee Dee Artner

Forgiving someone who has wronged you is actually a selfish act rather than a selfless one. — Robin S. Sharma

I want to live not for selfish gain, but for selfless devotion. — Tanner Di Bella

There is absolutely no excuse to stay where you are at right now. If you are weak, He can make you strong. If you are timid He can make you brave. If you are a pervert, He can make you pure. If you are selfish, He can make you selfless. if you are a shepherd, He can make you a king. If you are mediocre, He can make you a Mighty One of valor. — Eric Ludy

I'm not selfless. I've led a criminal, selfish life. Not sure I've ever cared about anyone." She watched him put his cigarette to his lips. It looked damp and forlorn, the way she felt, suddenly. "So it came as quite a shock to me to realize that when you love someone, it comes above all other things. All the other little pieces of your life. You just want them to be happy." - Kieran — Charlotte Stein

Joy is often an outgrowth not simply of following our vocation in life, but of helping those in need and of loving one another. So joy is not a selfish thing to seek, but a selfless thing to find. — James Martin

My personal convictions drive me to join those like-minded, in the recruitment of a growing army without guns, no hatred or prejudice, but with a leadership voice of influence and harnessing resources to create the change they desire. The major problems facing the world, particularly our beloved African continent, will not be won by sanctions, cruelty, ethnic cleansing, revenge, guns or bullets. The challenges are not largely externally motivated, so the platform to change them must shift. Shift from selfish to selfless, from external to internal, from behaviours to beliefs. Some of them are externally sponsored but self-inflicted, whilst most of them are due to greed, short-sightedness, abuse and selfishness. — Archibald Marwizi

It's a very selfish time. When I'm here at home, my responsibilities are far greater. I'm forced to be way more selfless. My priorities are so far down the list that it's hard to see them. And yet, when I'm on tour, I basically have to get the show right, every night, but the days are really constructed around selfish activities for self-improvement, or not. That's where I feel guilty because I know that life is going on full-speed when I'm not around. — Gavin Rossdale

[Margaret] went to a talk on parenting at the end of the school year where the speaker had said that doing good things, charitable things, was actually a selfish act, because it made you feel good. She has been mulling that ever since. Should she do something selfless, something good? Should she reach out to someone who really needs her forgiveness? Would this make her feel better? — Janice Y.K. Lee

At the beginning of the semester, when you asked who I loved the most, an image of my mother popped in my head. When you asked me who I loved the most for the second time, it wasn't an image of my mother. Instead, it was replaced by an image of a strawberry blonde with big, blue eyes.
It took me a long time to figure out the exact moment I fell in love with her, partly because I denied that I did until it was too late.
I fucked up so badly and did so many things wrong, to the point of no return, so I let her go. The selfless part inside of me wants to say I did the right thing, and the selfish part of me thinks I made the biggest mistake of my life. I guess the selfless side won out because, every time I look at her and see what I did, I realize I don't deserve her.
I was never supposed to fall in love with her, but that was the best mistake of my life. I will always love her; I have ever since I purposely bumped into her in the hallway. — Sarah Brianne

If your heart, mind, and actions are selfish, they will ultimately divide you, others, or entire [establishments]. When motivation is pure and selfless, it will result in helping bring others together. — A.J. Darkholme

She wondered if it counted as being good if you did the good thing for purely selfish reasons. Probably not, but who cared. What was important was what you did, not how you felt. — Emily Gould

The Realistic Vision recognizes the
need for strict moral education through parents, family, friends, and
community because people have a dual nature of being selfish and selfless,
competitive and cooperative, greedy and generous, and so we need rules
and guidelines and encouragement to do the right thing. — Michael Shermer

Ah, selfish. There's that word again." Sherry smirked. "It's been hurled at me many a time, because being a mother and wife is all about selflessness, see?" She imitated a perky, syrupy-sweet voice. "Giving up every molecule of your soul. If you want anything for yourself, you're accused of being selfish. Marriage and especially motherhood mean being condemned to play second fiddle your entire life. — Andrea Lochen

Any selfish person can light up a room. But a truly selfless person leaves the room (without saying goodbye to anyone) right before they get in a bad mood. See the distinction? — Jay Clark

Miki-san ... do you truly want that person's dream to come true? Or is it that you want to be that person's savior for making that dream come true? If you're going to fulfill someone else's dream, that's the time when it's most important to be sure you know your own wish. The two might seem the same, but they're entirely different. — Magica Quartet

Selfish is an exploitation of others for self; selfless is an exploitation of self for others. Both are extrinsic. ... Selfness. When selfness prevails, the qualities of others are sometimes used for self and the qualities of self are often extended to others. The basic and key difference is that exploitation is never the object of the outcome. — Bob Samples

Is there anyone I can level with? Anyone I dare tell that I am benevolent and malevolent, chaste and randy, compassionate and vindictive, selfless and selfish, that beneath my brave words lives a frightened child, that I dabble in religion and pornography, that I have blackened a friend's character, betrayed a trust, violated a confidence, that I am tolerant and thoughtful, a bigot and a blowhard, that I hate hard rock? — Brennan Manning

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

Destructive Abundance is what I call the result of this imbalance. It is what happens when selfish pursuits are out of balance with selfless pursuits. When the levels of dopamine-incentivized behaviors overwhelm the social protections afforded by the other chemicals. When protecting the results is prioritized above protecting those who produce the results. Destructive Abundance happens when the players focus almost exclusively on the score and forget why they set out to play the game in the first place. — Simon Sinek

No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity?-an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. — Ayn Rand

Love wasn't selfless, and it wasn't selfish either. Love was equality. It was saying that another person's self was just as important as yours, and expecting them to feel the same way. — Rose Lerner

But what Jamie was saying just mixed it all up, selfish and selfless. I wasn't even sure what the words meant anymore. or if it was possible to be one without the other. — Phoebe Kitanidis

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