For many years, I tried to make New Year's resolutions. I made lists and shot for great heights: I would show altruism and exert moral strength, patience and all those other great attributes.

For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.

A good deed has to do with the results, altruism with the intentions. The good deed is, of course, what matters for the person in need or for society. After all pure altruism is rare and without a kind of benefit for the benefactor ? even if that is just a pleasant feeling ? charity would be almost impossible.

Lies and egoism destroy. Honesty and altruism create.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness of virtue and sin among the members of a society.

If any civilization is to survive it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.