Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any...
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Theodore Dreiser
Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract....
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Edward O. Wilson
...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.
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Bill McKibben
Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
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William Wilberforce
That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth
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Alastair Reynolds
More Quotes By Tennessee Williams
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ..each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add...
You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.
Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
