Pitirim A. Sorokin Quotes

I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.

The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.

There's no such thing as altruism.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

We human beings are humane in part because we can look beyond our biology.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)

Human dignity can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness.

It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.

Magnanimity will not consider the prudence of its motives.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

I believe in doing good for good's sake.

A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.

Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness.

Altruism is for those who cannot endure their desires.

She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

The man of noble mind seeks to achieve the good in others and not their evil. The little-minded man is the reverse of this.

I have made it a principle to give advice that does not serve my personal interest but rather the common interests.