175 Quotes About Philanthropy

A hand gets way cleaner from washing, not itself, but the other hand.

There is no such thing as selflessness. There are only fair and unfair selfishness.

Private philanthropy might just be able to make United Nations agencies, international organizations, and government more effective in a way that just increasing taxes on billionaires can't.

We pray for others mainly or even only for ourselves.

It takes lives to save lives.

Putting someone before yourself is possible only if that is done literally.

It is not only every man for himself but also every man for some men for himself.

[I]f you don't feel or look rich, you don't necessarily feel the same sense of obligation that a traditional rich person does or should: Noblesse oblige is, after all, dependent on a classical idea of who is and is not the nobility. As that starts to fall away, obligation--to culture, to the future, to each other--begins to disappear too.

The besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course—I know not exactly when or where—he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.