68 Selfishness Quotes

You can't build marriage on a foundation of selfish hedonism, because that would be to promise people only roses, and marriage is also thorns.

In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool.

There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion's unsubduable array.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

'From now on I'm thinking only of me.' Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: 'But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?' 'Then,' said Yossarian, 'I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?'

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.

Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite.

Selfish hedonism is not a pejorative. It is a description--an exactly accurate description of what is involved in homosexual relations.

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are. He will discover the wisdom of universal love; he will feel the meanness and the injustice of sacrificing the reason and the liberty of his fellow-men to the indulgence of his physical appetites, and becoming a party to their degradation by the consummation of his own. Such, with those differences only incidental to the age and state of society in which they were promulgated, appear to have been the doctrines of Jesus Christ. It is not too much to assert that they have been the doctrines of every just and compassionate mind that ever speculated on the social nature of man.

Bakunin: Left to themselves people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they'd create a completely new kind of society if only people weren't so blind, stupid and selfish. Herzen: Is that the same people or different people? Bakunin: The same people.

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress, as well as others, than I had any conception [of], before I became President of the U.S.

It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. ~ Ch. 10

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

'Well, every one for himself, and Providence for us all--as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens.'

'I didn't care if the fucking Capitol tower fell on its side and rolled into the ocean with everyone in it. I have never seen such a display of hateful, selfish, self-centered fucks in my life.'

Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realise you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.

It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

L'amour est profondement egoiste, tandis que la maternite tend a multiplier nos sentiments.

Truscott: Why aren't you both at the funeral? I thought you were mourners. Fay: We decided not to go. We were afraid we might break down. Truscott: That's a selfish attitude to take. The dead can't bury themselves, you know.

I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.

Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness! Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all The wanton horrors of her bloody play; Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, Shunning the light, and owning not its name, Compelled by its deformity to screen With flimsy veil of justice and of right Its unattractive lineaments that scare All save the brood of ignorance; at once The cause and the effect of tyranny; Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile; Dead to all love but of its abjectness; With heart impassive by more noble powers Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; Despising its own miserable being, Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

It's a brutal book; it ought to be burnt by the common hangman. Smiles was the arch-Philistine, and his book the apotheosis of respectability, gigmanity, and selfish grab.

Stacey puts a little love in each pasta shell. But it's self-love, so it won't help you that much.

On his death bed, he supposedly asked his banker, 'Do I have enough money to buy all the children of Philadelphia a bike each?' The banker looked at his notes and said yes. Fields stayed quiet for a moment in deep thought and replied 'Well fuck 'em!'

Remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? 'A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.'

It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. ~ Ch. 10

Why you sad about that? She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me

She did love him, you know... It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give

Each incapable of knowing the others virtue, because like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others

You hold freedom like a prize, and it's in your power to help others be free, but you're too selfish to reach out and give them freedom, too. Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves

I hardly recognize him here. He was very egocentric, tried to get ahead without considering others.

'I don't want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments,' he once said. 'That's no contribution to society. That [tennis] was purely selfish; that was for me.'

Egoisten sind wir alle, der eine mehr, der andere weniger. Der eine lasst seinen Egoismus nackend laufen, der andere hangt ihm ein Mantelchen um.

Now I do as I please And I lie through my teeth Someone might get hurt But it won't be me I should probably feel cheap But I just feel free Or a little bit empty.

'One fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself: In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.' ? (p.528)

No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit the man.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

People are self-centered to a nauseous degree. They will keep on about themselves while I'm explaining me.

[R]eason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.

We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself, but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe to myself. What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death?