altruism

It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.

Today. the celebration is for the "victorious", not the meritorious. The depiction to the youth, is that one can be victorious without merit, and that merit is less notable than victory. The result, is the masses are selectively and passively affirming that winning trumps hard work, that theft trumps the pride of ownership, and that personal success trumps collective progress.

Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives... I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."John Stuart Mill ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 )

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." &__hese capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people__ _

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness... & ... Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative._

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.

If humans are indeed products of a design, is it not wise to make humans selfish? A selfish person safeguards what__ important to him and never exchanges it to one with a lesser value. If the salvation of his soul is the most important to him, he will do everything to secure it. An unselfish person who values his soul just as much is ready to exchange his salvation for less. They are self-deniers, right?

Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.

People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one s promises reducing a partner s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

The practice of cultivating altruism has a beneficial effect not only from the religious point of view but also from the mundane point of view, not only for long term spiritual development but even in terms of immediate rewards.

What is so 'only' about 'yourself'? Is not the first thing one has to learn in this respect that to do something for yourself--I mean, the right kind of thing--is just as valuable and ethical than to do it for somebody else? Wouldn't you say that the good feeling we get simply because we did 'it' (whatever) for somebody else is cheating, in that it postpones the question: what is it good for?

In the midst of a culture that is rationally organized for a vocational workaday life, there is hardly any room for the cultivation of acosmic brotherliness, unless it is among strata who are economically carefree. Under the technical and social conditions of rational culture, an imitation of the life of Buddha, Jesus, or Francis seems condemned to failure for purely external reasons.

men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.

Free markets and capitalism are predicated upon the definition of greed as altruistic in economics".~R. Alan Woods [2012]

A humanitarian seldom makes a good lover. For a lover__ world revolves around their lover, while a humanitarian__ world revolves around the world.