“My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity… and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein , book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)
Context: I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work. I have never served a work as I would like to, but I do try, with each book, to serve to the best of my ability, and this attempt at serving is the greatest privilege and the greatest joy that I know.

“Please give a detailed account as to how I can best serve humanity”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice
On Vocational Choices
Context: In those ways that open to you day by day. It isn't always the individual that plans to accomplish some great deed that does the most. It is the one who meets the opportunities and privileges which are accorded it day by day. As such opportunities are used, there are better ways opened. For what we use in the way of helpfulness to others, increases in itself. Begin with what you are!

“It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Es ist so bequem, unmündig zu sein. Habe ich ein Buch, das für mich Verstand hat, einen Seelsorger, der für mich Gewissen hat, einen Arzt, der für mich die Diät beurtheilt u. s. w., so brauche ich mich ja nicht selbst zu bemühen. Ich habe nicht nöthig zu denken, wenn ich nur bezahlen kann.
What is Enlightenment? (1784)

“Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?”

Pierre Corneille Nicomède

Seigneur, si j'ai raison, qu'importe à qui je sois?
Nicomède, act I, scene ii.
Nicomède (1651)

“It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.”

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) German artist

Quoted in Käthe Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings (1981) by Renate Hinz
Other Quotes
Context: My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

“Well, before you are always self—you’re always self-centered. Everything is for you. Your self is God. And we make lousy gods. Humans make lousy gods, I think. We need to let God be God and us be what we are. I think that’s what changes: the focus on who you’re serving. You’re not serving you. You’re serving Christ.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

“I am a beggar for the poor. Serving humanity is the biggest Jihad.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted by Chris Brummitt of AP, in NBC News ( August 29, 2010 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38903962/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/aging-philanthropist-pakistans-mother-teresa/#.V4_oBvskrcs/). Retrieved on July 21, 2016