Adam Smith Quotes

And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.

The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.

To help all created things, that is the measure of all our responsibility; to be helped by all, that is the measure of our hope.

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.

The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.

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

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

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

I think the point of our country, our planet, the reason we're all here, one of the best things that we can do is be concerned about something even when it doesn't concern us. That's the whole point.

People aren't inherently sympathetic.

I've learned that all of us should be constantly mindful of what's going on around us. Sometimes I think we get pretty single-minded in our pursuits and forget that we really do need each other. We need to actively engage in giving and helping each other every day.

We're a blip in the existence of the universe, and we're constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other.

Fraternity and compassion are written into nature's DNA.

What makes us different from other species is our capacity for compassion and empathy with the struggles of other people.

Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.

We are all here on earth to help others.

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.

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.

But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

We are all interconnected in a web of kindness from which it is impossible to separate ourself.

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

It is the spread of the good things that vindicates the whole reason we live our lives in networks. If I was always violent to you or gave you germs, you would cut the ties to me and the network would disintegrate. In a deep and fundamental way, networks are connected to goodness, and goodness is required for networks to emerge and spread.

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.