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Selfishness
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“The so-called selfishness of moderns is partly due to the tremendous amount of stimulation received. They are aroused and drawn into experience by theaters, books, automobiles, great cities. The current is quick and strong.”
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“He was really quite a selfish person — I think most unhappy people are, don't you?”
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“That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us.”
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“The country is suffering from musical-chairs syndrome. We all dance around for a bit and then when we try to sit down again, somebody doesn't have a chair. We're running scared; we want ours.”
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“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.”
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“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”
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“Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.”
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“One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.”
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“Show me an 'easy person,' and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his 'easiness' are generally shouldered by other people.”
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“... tender hearts as well were hearts of stone, / If what they feel is for themselves alone.”
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“... life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of 'family.'”
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“You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.”
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“Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.”
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“... there were people who occupied telephone booths as though they had rented them for the day.”
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“A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.”
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“... stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.”
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“No one has a right to hoard things which he cannot use.”
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“No people complain so much of selfishness as the selfish.”
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“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
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“Maybe selflessness was only selfishness on another level.”