Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.

To affirm my own rights I must define and affirm the rights of others.

Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down.

Why do we have 47 million people without health care? Because America has become about 'me'. What's happened to 'we' as a people? I believe in that and that resonates to most people.

It is the duty of man to raise up man.

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

If a person loves only one other person, and is indifferent to his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

People are not considerate of others. They tend not to consider themselves as all living together, but see themselves only as individuals.

The 20th century has been marked by cynicism, selfishness, greed, and the desire to please, all without changing the status quo. In the 21st century, we must resurrect solidarity and compassion.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Without love, we are not free from our own self interest.

Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each.

The major forces in human nature: self interest and caring for others

What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death?

It's an important lesson Dad instilled in me, the idea that we have the freedom to serve, and that the choice to serve can define the type of life you live.

Anarchy would be a world that nobody felt responsible for, that nobody felt any sort of love for. When there's real intelligence happening, when there's real love happening, there's a sense of responsibility: Hey, we've got to take care of this place and each other.

Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'

Entrepreneurs may be brutally honest, but fostering relationships with partners and building enduring communities requires empathy, self-sacrifice and a willingness to help others without expecting anything in return.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.

I never wanted to hurt anyone else, most of all my family and my kids.

I don't know if it's ever OK for someone to be selfish. Perhaps there's a time and place to be self-centered, but I think selfish never wins the race.

I hope it's enabling me to deal with another human being who's more important to me than I am.

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.