The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'
Alain de Botton
I'm feeling more and more thoughts that aren't songs, just reflections. I'm always been very shy and in some ways a prisoner in one language and I feel that the liberation of creativity has to be in all senses. So I've been deciding to publishing something very simple but very small at the same time, nothing egocentric.
Ana Tijoux
All I care is that my family, and my loved ones, understand me. Or that they understand me to a degree - I don't understand me very much. And I don't need the world to understand me. That is the most egocentric thing.
Andrea Corr
Most of us are consumed with our own thoughts and desires and are not always thinking about what other people may want. This is not necessarily being egocentric; it is just being human.
Bo Bennett
People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail.
Bob Newhart
Base stealers are often considered their own breed: reckless, egocentric, even a touch mad.
David Grann
There is a close meshing with the ritual properties of persons and with the egocentric forms of territoriality.
Erving Goffman
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.
Gary Hamel
In the end, you need to be a little masochistic to be a goalkeeper. A masochist and egocentric as well.
Gianluigi Buffon
I live with one foot in the sand and one in the snow. There's European egocentricity, and the African opposite. I normally say that my African experience has made me a better European.
Henning Mankell
'Cloud' and 'Flower' are very much egocentric about my own expression. 'Flow' is more utilitarian, and 'Journey' is more about collaboration between various creative voices in the team.
Jenova Chen
If we fail to appreciate the soul that Easternism gives us, then what we have is a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process that counts on cleverness.
Joel Salatin
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
John C. Maxwell
I was suited for fame, and I mean that in the most non-egocentric way. I don't mind gearing my life towards privacy. It's my nature.
John Travolta
It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.
Katharine Hepburn
Of course I believe in aliens. I think it's very egocentric to think that there's nothing else with intelligence in the whole universe.
Lizzie Brochere
Creative directors can be egocentric, they say. I decide; they shout at people and harass. I don't want that.
Marco Bizzarri
You know, I'm a really individualistic person. I'm extremely narcissistic and egocentric, too. So I have one life, and I have to live it the way I want.
Marjane Satrapi
Americans are so egocentric.
Mark Kurlansky
I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
Martin Landau
Many people you think are individual achievers in fact have either a strong spousal partner over many years or a business partner who's either in the background, not given enough publicity or less egocentric.
The universe is almost 14 billion years old, and, wow! Life had no problem starting here on Earth! I think it would be inexcusably egocentric of us to suggest that we're alone in the universe.
Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.
Of course I have had a boyfriend. However, I was way too busy while taking care of myself, and I could not show a better care for my boyfriend. I found myself getting more and more egocentric, and I was not a good girlfriend at all.
My mother was a dramatic and egocentric person, and she died before my father, who died of Alzheimer's disease. But I'd often thought, God, we were so lucky that was the order in which they died because she would have felt put upon.
I am very much an only child, meaning I am self-reliant, egocentric, sociable. I had my mother, father, and an uncle who lived with us, all doting on me.
Anybody who's away from what's normal is just kind of pushed aside as, 'Oh, he's crazy.' But in reality, this world is crazy. It's just chaos everywhere. It's really hard to be part of this world, because it's very possessed. And very egocentric.
Some people have a blog that's, like, 'Today I brushed my teeth.' Well, who cares? Who cares that you brushed your teeth. Okay - you brushed your teeth! That's so massively egocentric, it's just ridiculous.
