Truism Quotes

1. "You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world."
Author: A.S. Byatt

2. "Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: "No." Altruism says: "Yes."
Author: Ayn Rand

3. "We, all of us, could do a much better job of evoking what someone has called the universal principle of human altruism: the urge in us all to help others who are in danger."
Author: Bart Starr

4. "Altruism always lived in my heart.I knew it was there, I knew it from the start"
Author: Charmaine J Forde

5. "I suppose the spiritual trance is harder to break than the religious one because the delusion is more difficult to distinguish. You have a quasi-cloud of ideas that include wonderful concepts of openness and altruism without the blatant anthropomorphism of religion."
Author: Christopher Loren

6. "Not only do I believe that it is possible to maintain moral standards without the crutch of religion—but I would argue that it is the only way to achieve true goodness and express real altruism. Free from the constraints of organized religion, a human being is able to express decency from one's self—as opposed to attempting to appease whatever higher power he or she may believe in."
Author: David G. McAfee

7. "The person who works for recognition devalues the work he does, that awards are first and foremost political instruments, that altruism's true name is always Anonymous."
Author: David Marusek

8. "Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales."
Author: David Mixner

9. "Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped."
Author: David Rakoff

10. "I am an actress, I earn money, I am well-known. I don't think it is altruism to become engaged in humanitarian work. It's the least one can do."
Author: Emmanuelle Beart

11. "Svoboda sledovat své vlastní zámery je však prinejmenším stejne duležitá pro úplného altruistu jako pro nejvetšího sobce. Altruismus, má-li být ctností, jiste nepredpokládá, že se musí poslouchat vule nekoho jiného. Je ale pravda, že znacná cást predstíraného altruismu se projevila touhou primet ostatní ke službe cílum, které "altruista" považuje za duležité."
Author: Friedrich Hayek

12. "It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

13. "The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

14. "And yet hewas in the right! They were wrong and he was right. Theobvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truismsare true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its lawsdo not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupportedfall towards the earth's centre"
Author: George Orwell

15. "A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the hightest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume."
Author: Gore Vidal

16. "A friend once asked me why it was that stories about animals and their heroism...are so compelling....we love them because they're the closest thing we have to material evidence of an objective moral order--or, to put it another way, they're the closest thing we have to proof of the existence of God. They seem to prove that the things that matter to and move us the most--things like love, courage, loyalty, altruism--aren't just ideas we made up from nothing. To see them demonstrated in other animals proves they're real things, that they exist in the world independently of what humans invent and tell each other in the form of myth or fable."
Author: Gwen Cooper

17. "The Fathers of the Republic, I believe, were far cleverer fellows than they are commonly represented to be, even in the schoolbooks. If it was not divine inspiration that moved them, then they must have drunk better liquor than is now obtainable on earth. For when they made religion a free-for-all, they prepared the way for making it ridiculous; and when they opened the doors of office to the mob, they disposed forever of the delusion that government is a solemn and noble thing, by wisdom out of altruism."
Author: H.L. Mencken

18. "This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater impatience. The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces."
Author: Henry Hazlitt

19. "At the core, our motives are always self-serving, Kate. Altruism is a fog created by sly minds seeking to benefit from the energy and skill of others. Nothing more."
Author: Ilona Andrews

20. "A blanket can be a statement—a generalization and truism covering a multitude of categories, like corruption, ineptitude, ignorance, arrogance, greed, and sloth—which would all fall under the blanket of "Politics.""
Author: Jarod Kintz

21. "The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings."
Author: Jasper Fforde

22. "Altruism is one of the most fundamentally social impulses, and doing things for others without expecting anything in return is core to what makes us human. This is why, from the day Facebook Platform launched in 2007, Causes has been honored to be one of the most popular applications, with over 140 million users."
Author: Joe Green

23. "In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism."
Author: John Buchanan Robinson

24. "The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for."
Author: John Fowles

25. "Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we're actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for answers or what. I always get annoyed when in books or movies characters want clear things for clear reasons, because my experience of humanness is that I always want messy things for messy reasons."
Author: John Green

26. "...aquellos sentimientos de generosidad y de altruismo que son, como todo el mundo sabe, dos de las mejores características del género humano, que pueden hallarse, incluso, en delincuentes más empedernidos..."
Author: José Saramago

27. "It is a truism but it is still true that the longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially."
Author: Julian Fellowes

28. "I remembered a truism that I had always known: no woman need let a man know the contents of her mind."
Author: Karen Essex

29. "What does somebody like you want? More power? More toys? More sex?""All of the above. All the time.""Greedy bugger.""Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshipping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, smarter, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself. Not greedy, Dani. Alive. And happy about it every single fucking day."
Author: Karen Marie Moning

30. "Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism."
Author: Katherine Fullerton Gerould

31. "We're playing Three Wishes," she told her friend. "Cake, hot bath, soft bed. How about you?""World peace," said Karou.Zuzana rolled her eyes. "Yes, Saint Karou.""Cure for cancer," Karou went on. "And unicorns for all.""Bluh. Nothing ruins Three Wishes like altruism. It has to be something for yourself, and if it doesn't include food, it's a lie.""I did include food. I said unicorns, didn't I?""Mmm. You're craving unicorn, are you?" Zuzana's brow furrowed. "Wait. Do they have those here?""Alas, no.""They did," said Mik. "But Karou ate them all.""I am a voracious unicorn predator."
Author: Laini Taylor

32. "People and places are the source of my work, both in prose and verse-and this remark is not the truism it seems, for I do not distinguish as sharply between a place and a person as most people seem to do."
Author: Leonard Alfred George Strong

33. "Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species."
Author: Lewis Thomas

34. "You will achieve what you want to achieve, only if you can cope with the theory of altruism."
Author: Michael Bassey Johnson

35. "Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace."
Author: Norman Finkelstein

36. "It is a truism to say that the dog is largely what his master makes of him: he can be savage and dangerous, untrustworthy, cringing and fearful; or he can be faithful and loyal, courageous and the best of companions and allies."
Author: Ranulph Fiennes

37. "Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter."
Author: Raymond E. Feist

38. "If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature."
Author: Richard Dawkins

39. "Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."
Author: Richard Dawkins

40. "Choose altruism, because selfishism is a lonely, cold, dark hole."
Author: Richelle E. Goodrich

41. "It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."
Author: Robert A. Heinlein

42. "Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice—all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the "good of the species" and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clearer than ever how (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self-interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse. The title of this book is not wholly without irony."
Author: Robert Wright

43. "Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
Author: Roman Payne

44. "People change, he thought -it's truism- but how? Our life is confined to days, after all: Sunday to Monday, dusk to dawn. What great alterations can take place in someone between breakfast and lunch? Is it possible to wake up as one person and fall asleep as another?"
Author: Sam Taylor Mullens

45. "Altruism is for thosewho can't endure their desires.There's a worldas ambiguous as a moan,a pleasure moanour earnest neighborsmight think a crime.It's where we could live.I'll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.--Mon Semblable"
Author: Stephen Dunn

46. "They are surprised that he did it, though, which shows you that the male mind expects very little in the way of altruism from it's fellows."
Author: Stephen King

47. "Lets say from the first moment of my life, everything's always been about me and nothing else, including apocalypse and chaos; let's say even apocalypse and chaos have been conceits of my psyche and bad faith--this assumes I ever kept any kind of faith at all, bad or otherwise...Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully."
Author: Steve Erickson

48. "How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it's against all odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we rolled thirteen, threw down five aces and ran away giggling. She was the summertime cousin out of storybooks, the one you taught to swim at some midge-humming lake and pestered with tadpoles down her swimsuit, with whom you practiced first kisses on a heather hillside and laughed about it years later over a clandestine joint in your granny's cluttered attic. She painted my fingernails gold and dared me to leave them that way for work…We climbed out her window and down the fire escape and lay on the roof of the extension below, drinking improvised cocktails and singing Tom Waits and watching the stars spin dizzily around us.No."
Author: Tana French

49. "It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence cannot be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it."
Author: Theodore Roosevelt

50. "But they are practically brother and sister," ejaculated Marina, thinking as many stupid people do that "practically" works both ways - reducing the truth of a statement and making a truism sound like the truth."
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Truism Quotes Pictures