Selfishness Quotes

Most popular selfishness quotes

The smallest good deed done unselfishly is more precious than innumerable good deeds done selfishly. - Gautama Buddha quote.
The smallest good deed done unselfishly is more precious than innumerable good deeds done selfishly.

helping others

You have to become indignant against the injustice that not everyone has bread and work. In this world many people look out for themselves. And how curious it is that those who look out for themselves and not for the common good are usually the ones who go around cursing, who curse other people and things. - Pope Francis quote.
You have to become indignant against the injustice that not everyone has bread and work. In this world many people look out for themselves. And how curious it is that those who look out for themselves and not for the common good are usually the ones who go around cursing, who curse other people and things.

helping others inequality

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. - Herbert Spencer quote.
What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

law

The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle.

alcohol addiction

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.  Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. - Woodrow Wilson quote.
If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.  Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

character

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing. - C. C. Colton quote.
Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing.

charity

Charity, to be fruitful, must cost us.  Give until it hurts.  To love it is necessary to give; to give it is necessary to be free from selfishness. - Mother Teresa quote.
Charity, to be fruitful, must cost us.  Give until it hurts.  To love it is necessary to give; to give it is necessary to be free from selfishness.

charity

Perhaps evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior, and this behavior the result of conscious, accountable choice. - Joyce Carol Oates quote.
Perhaps evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior, and this behavior the result of conscious, accountable choice.

evil

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

joy happiness purpose of life

Love is the most selfish of all the passions. - Alexandre Dumas quote.
Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

love passion

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. - Jane Austen quote.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure. - Jane Austen quote.
Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself. - Henry Ward Beecher quote.
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
There is a benevolence in all wise selfishness. - Henry Ward Beecher quote.
There is a benevolence in all wise selfishness.

proverbs

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. - Ambrose Bierce quote.
Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. - Anita Brookner quote.
You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. - Lord Byron quote.
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years. - Carolyn Heilbrun quote.
Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.
Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away.
Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs. - Richard Dawkins quote.
Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. - Erich Fromm quote.
Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
He was really quite a selfish person—I think most unhappy people are, don't you? - Dorothy Gilman quote.
He was really quite a selfish person—I think most unhappy people are, don't you?
The greatest productive force is human selfishness. - Robert A. Heinlein quote.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
Even generous actions can be selfish if the motive is to gain bragging rights or receive a reward.  Almost every sinful action can be traced back to a selfish motive.
Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love.
At the heart of every vice sits selfishness, yawning.

vice

Maybe selflessness was only selfishness on another level.
No people complain so much of selfishness as the selfish.
A selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others. - Thomas Merton quote.
A selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. That is in itself a great force: they do not waste their energies in considering the good of others. - Ouida quote.
Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. That is in itself a great force: they do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.
Ouida Wanda, Countess von Szalras: A Novel
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Selfishness. - Ayn Rand quote.
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Selfishness.
Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness. - Agnes Repplier quote.
Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect. - George Sand quote.
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.
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.

mistakes truth

Next to the very young, I suspect the very old are the most selfish. - William Thackeray quote.
Next to the very young, I suspect the very old are the most selfish.

youth & age

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. - Oscar Wilde quote.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type.  Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. - Oscar Wilde quote.
Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type.  Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

variety

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion. - Franklin D. Roosevelt quote.
Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

aspiration

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.