Charles Fletcher Dole Quotes

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

Why does God endow us with compassion?

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.

Humans are not really very humane.

Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one 'from love.' Love is to rule.

We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.

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.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

There's no such thing as altruism.

You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.

Good people don't spend their time being good. Good people want to spend their time mowing the lawn and playing with the dog. But bad people spend all their time being bad. It is all they think about.

This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural.

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.

I don't see why it should be remarkable that you can acquire a reputation for fairness and decency. Those are qualities shared by so many people. And the great majority of people I meet are decent people, just trying to navigate their way through the world without causing too much trouble.

I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.

To be doing good deeds is man's most glorious task.