A Quote by Elbert Hubbard
Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves.
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The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.
Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.
Real success requires respect for and faithfulness to the highest human values-honesty, integrity, self-discipline, dignity, compassion, humility, courage, personal responsibility, courtesy, and human service.
Ultimately, and I believe this is one of the fundamental problems with socialism, it's that human beings do have self-interest. It's very hard to ignore that self-interest when you're creating a government structure.
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.
The best form of customer service is self service. Constantly empower customers to get their own answers themselves.
The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.
Service is the highest form of prayer as far as I am concerned.
There is a self interest in voting for a society where there is health care for all, where there's a mental health service for all, where there is education service for all.
Politics now is really only about self-interest, which means it has violence built into it because your self-interest is going to collide with the self-interest of the rest of the world. That's inevitable.
If the denial of death is self-hatred, as it is to deny our freedom and live in fear of death (which is to say, to live in a form of bondage), then the acceptance and affirmation of death is indeed a form of self-love. But I'd want to make a distinction between a form of self-love which is essential to what it means to be human, and a narcissism of self-regard, like Rousseau's distinction between amour de soi and amour propre, self-love and pride.
Widen your shriveled heart, make the interests of others your own and serve them as much as you can by sympathy, kindness, presents and so forth. So long as one enjoys the things of this world and has needs and wants, it is necessary to minister to the needs of one's fellow men. Otherwise one cannot be called a human being. Whenever you have the opportunity, give to the poor, feed the hungry, nurse the sick - do service as a religious duty and you will come to know by direct perception that the person served, the one who serves and the act of service are separate only in appearance.
In the past, destruction of your neighbour might have been considered a victory, but today we are all interdependent. We live in a global economy; we face problems like climate change that affect us all. The 7 billion human beings alive today belong to one human family. In the context that others' interests are in our interest and our interest is in their interest, the use of force is self-destructive.
It matters, it matters very much, what each of us chooses to do. The journey toward self-discovery and self-knowledge is not only life's highest adventure, but also the only way to transform society from one based on self-centeredness and compulsory compassion to one based on service and mutual responsibility.
We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.
Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.
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