In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comment on selfishness.
- All love is life, it is the only law of life; all selfishness is death, and this is true here or hereafter. It is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others.[Source]
- All narrowness, all contraction, all selfishness is simply slow suicide, and when a nation commits the fatal mistake of contracting itself and of thus cutting off all expansion and life, it must die.[Source]
- Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness.[Source]
- Beware! All expansion is life, all contraction is death. All love is expansions all selfishness is contraction.[Source]
- Do not project that tentacle of selfishness, “I must possess it”. As soon as that is projected, misery will begin.[Source]
- Even misery can be enjoyed when there is no selfishness, when we have become the witness of our own lives.[Source]
- Every act of selfishness or thought of selfishness makes us attached to something, and immediately we are made slaves.[Source]
- Everything that has selfishness for its basis, competition as its right hand, and enjoyment as its goal, must die sooner or later. Such things must die.[Source]
- First destroy the tendency to project this tentacle of selfishness, and when you have the power of checking it, hold it in and do not allow the mind to get into the ways of selfishness. Then you may go out into the world and work as much as you can.[Source]
- It is all a degeneration which has its root in selfishness.[Source]
- It is in the nature of things that many should fall, that troubles should come, that tremendous difficulties should arise, that selfishness and all the other devils in the human heart should struggle hard when they are about to be driven out by the fire of spirituality.[Source]
- It is said by some that selfishness is the only motive power in regard to all human activities. That also is love lowered by being particularised. When I think of myself as comprehending the Universal, there can surely be no selfishness in me; but when I, by mistake, think that I am a little something, my love becomes particularized and narrowed.[Source]
- It is selfishness as it is manifested in the world, but that selfishness is really but a small part of that Self-ness.[Source]
- It is selfishness that we must seek to eliminate. I find that whenever I have made a mistake in my life, it has always been because self entered into the calculation.[Source]
- It is the horrible body-idea that breeds all the selfishness in the world.[Source]
- It is the same story all over the country. But then, it is not as a result of pure wickedness that the selfishness commonly met with in our country has come. This bestial selfishness is the outcome of centuries of failure and repression. It is not real selfishness, but deep-rooted despair. It will be cored at the first inkling of success.[Source]
- It is this that is called liberation-in-life — when the last trace of egoism and selfishness is gone.[Source]
- It is the weakness that is the source of all selfishness.[Source]
- Karma without desire of return will destroy the selfishness, which is the root of all bondage.[Source]
- Man is a bundle of selfishness.[Source]
- No selfishness, no name, no fame, yours or mine, nor my Master’s even! Work, work the idea, the plan, my boys, my brave, noble, good souls — to the wheel, to the wheel put your shoulders![Source]
- Our own selfishness makes us the most arrant cowards; our own selfishness is the great cause of fear and cowardice.[Source]
- Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first. He who thinks, “I will eat first, I will have more money than others, and I will possess everything”, he who thinks, “I will get to heaven before others I will get Mukti before others” is the selfish man.[Source]
- Selfishness is the devil incarnate in every man. Every bit of self, bit by bit, is devil. Take off self by one side and God enters by the other. When the self is got rid of, only God remains. Light and darkness cannot remain together.[Source]
- So long as there its selfishness in the heart, so long is love of God impossible.[Source]
- The Adhikarivada is the outcome of pure selfishness.[Source]
- The cause of evil is our desire to be superior to others and our selfishness.[Source]
- The difference between God and the devil is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness — that makes him a devil.[Source]
- The first veil to vanish is ignorance; and when that is gone, sin goes; next desire ceases, selfishness ends, and all misery disappears.[Source]
- The man propelled by his own feelings and his own senses, what does he know about work? He works, who is not propelled by his own desires, by any selfishness whatsoever. He works, who has no ulterior motive in view. He works, who has nothing to gain from work.[Source]
- There must not be a shade of jealousy or selfishness, then you are a leader.[Source]
- This is the basis of all ignorance that we, the immortal, the ever pure, the perfect Spirit, think that we are little minds, that we are little bodies; it is the mother of all selfishness.[Source]
- This was the basis of his (Gautama Buddha) religion. So long as society tries to cure human selfishness by laws and institutions whose aim is to force others to do good to their neighbors, nothing can be done. The remedy is not to place trick against trick and force against force. The only remedy is in making unselfish men and women. You may enact laws to cure present evils, but they will be of no avail.[Source]
- We must do the work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost without exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence, till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work.[Source]
- What is perfect self-abnegation? It means the abnegation of this apparent self, the abnegation of all selfishness. This idea of “me and mine” — Ahamkâra and Mamatâ — is the result of past Superstition, and the more this present self passes away, the more the real Self becomes manifest. This is true self-abnegation.[Source]
- What will you do with individual salvation? That is sheer selfishness. Throw aside your meditation, throw away your salvation and such things! Put your whole heart and soul in the work to which I have consecrated myself.[Source]
- Why give thirsty people ditch-water to drink whilst the river of life and truth flows by? This is only human selfishness, nothing else.[Source]
- With the sense of possession comes selfishness, and selfishness brings on misery.[Source]
See also
