Neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall ever prevail against us.
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The change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend on other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economies, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand.
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I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
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In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
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Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.
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The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. 'Special' and 'limited' are important words in the last sentence. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.
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Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
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'Recorded history shows the relationship between human and animal has been very one-sided! Man's exploitation/treatment of animals stands out as one of the darkest stains on his reputation. Is the purpose of life for the indulgence of selfish desires? Or a medium for soul growth? If we behave brutally or selfishly, then we are brutes and selfish. No religious label or outward facade alters this truth. Can we believe in and preach life after death, and yet be party to murdering millions of innocent animals via the blood-drenched abattoir, vivisection, fur trade, 'games', entertainment, 'sports'???'
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Glory built on selfish principles is shame and guilt.
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Try to raise a voice that shall be heard from here to Albany and watch what it is that comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your fathers offering you a place in his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if any of you young gentlemen have a mind to get heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputation, and a close enemy of most men who wish you well. And what will you get in return? Well, if I must for the benefit of the economists, charge you up with some selfish gain, I will say that you get the satisfaction of having been heard, and that this is the whole possible scope of human ambition.
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Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.
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What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
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Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
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Cher: I think, no, no I am certain that you are the most unattractive man I have met in my entire life. In the short time that I have known you, you have demonstrated all of the loathsome characteristics of the male personality, AND even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, morally reprehensible, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humor, and you smell. You know, you're not even interesting enough to make me sick. Jack Nicholson: Uh, do you want to be on the top or the bottom?
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Let us not think that [vegetarianism] is the end in itself. It is a means only to an end, and we must not be content to be vegetarians only. The end is the civilisation of the universal feeling of brotherhood, on which it rests, not towards animals only, but towards all men . . . our treatment of our fellow-humans is largely reflected from our behaviour towards the sub-human races. As long as our ethics in this matter are based on barbaric cruelty and selfish tyranny it will forever be well-nigh impossible to attain a high and just social morality.
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The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish, and the tyranny of evil men.
Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepards the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brothers keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
And you will know my name is the LORD, when I lay my vengeance upon thee!
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I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
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Not that I say,'Oh, I'm not going to associate with certain people,' but I have my world, and I only want to be around people who I feel stimulated by. I have to be honest I do have a new quest: I want to meet more vegetarians, people who are more like minded. There's something real neat about that feeling. It makes you feel so settled to know there's somebody else sitting right there, being so passionate about what I'm passionate about. I don't want to be around selfish people. I try to keep myself surrounded by deep people who will move me.
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The truth is we're being selfish. We're getting more out of this than they are.
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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 ma...
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The person I love would never wear fur. Fur just makes me think of shallow women who have no conscience. The fur industry belongs to a time when people were selfish beyond belief. If you were some ancient tribal cheiftain, and there was not a department store nearby 350 years ago, I'd understand. But now, we have synthetic fibers,and it's not necessary. The elitism of fur makes me wanna puke.
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Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers..... Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life..... But why would I want to do a thing like that?
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You told me, I remember, glory, built On selfish principles, is shame and guilt; The deeds that men admire as half divine, Stark naught, because corrupt in their design. Strange doctrine this! that without scruple tears The laurel that the very lightning spares; Brings down the warrior
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A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.
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Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in , say, physics, mathematics, or medicine -- the special pleading of selfish interests.
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James 4:3:
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
(NIV)
[Or] you do ask [God for them] and yet fail to receive, because you ask with wrong purpose and evil, selfish motives. Your intention is [when you get what you desire] to spend it in sensual pleasures.
(AMP)
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
(KJV)
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The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.
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You see, you all start with the premise that democracy is some good. I don't think it's worth a damn. I think Churchill is right, the only thing to be said for democracy is that there is nothing else that's any better, and therefore he used to say, Tyranny tempered by assassination, but lots of assassination. People say, If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better. I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are; just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish. You know the Congress is a perfect example, and created to be a perfect example.
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It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but 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.
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