Selfishness Quotes

Charles Williams loved his son with reservations, complaining that a child is a guest of a somewhat inconsistent temperament, rather difficult to get rid of, almost pushing; a poor relation rather than a pleasant kind.

~ Philip Zaleski

Everybody wants to be your friend when you have something that they want.

~ Moosa Rahat

That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth

~ Alastair Reynolds

perturbed to put trust on people nowadays, people changes partner as per necessity. :(

~ Kurbhatt

As there would be no more inheritance, there would be no more greed. Peter Kropotkin

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.

~ Randy Alcorn

[G]iving yourself some loving attention is not selfish. It is sensible. If you feel loved and cherished--even if it is only by yourself--then you will have more love to give to others, too. (83)

~ Penelope Quest

God comes right out and tells us why he gives us more money than we need. It's not so we can find more ways to spend it. It's not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It's not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God's provision. It's so we can give and give generously (2 Corinthians 8:14, 9:11)

~ Randy Alcorn

Do you know, I am putting off ending this letter as though the end would be the end of something I want to hold on to. That's not true of course - just a feeling like the quick one of hexing your trip so you couldn't go. The mind is capable of any selfishness and it thinks unworthy things whether you want it or not. Best to admit it is a bad child rather than to pretend it is always a good one. Because a bad child can improve but a good one is a liar and nothing can improve a liar.

~ John Steinbeck

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don't know where to look for it any longer. And I don't know if I would recognize it if I found it. And the longer I look, the more selfish I grow.For I think only of my own happiness. i think I have lost the ability to make someone else happy. If I ever had it. And I suppose we can never be happy unless we can also give happiness.

~ Mary Balogh

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

~ Albert Camus

Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.

~ Ouida

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

~ David Mitchell

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect

~ George Sand

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?

~ Alan Lightman

The ego hates losing – even to God.

~ Richard Rohr

Just two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self.

~ Kenneth E. Collier

But selfish isn't necessarily a bad thing. It only means you take care of yourself and you have to do that to be able to take care of others.

~ Tera Lynn Childs

Love was selfish, wasn't it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another's mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.

~ Alexandra Bracken

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

~ Henry Ward Beecher

Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account, in expectation of a return, I know I should be disappointed, and that I should in vain depend upon your gratitude. Here then I leave you to labour alone; You treat me in the same manner. The seasons change; and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.

~ David Hume

The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.

~ Wangari Maathai

A man is nothing more than the things he does to get what he wants.

~ Hal Ackerman

When you sever ties with the unit purely for self-serving intentions, you are likely to find yourself stranded and struggling to survive; fighting to keep your head above water. What’s more, there is no one to save you because you’ve turned your back on your comrades and snubbed your support system.

~ Carlos Wallace

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

~ Rick Yancey

What are you really living for? It's crucial to realize that you either glorify God, or you glorify something or someone else. You're always making something look big. If you don't glorify God when you're involved in a conflict, you inevitably show that someone or something else rules your heart.

~ Ken Sande

Better not to plant seeds of selfishness than try to eradicate them once they have grown into giant weeds. (91)

~ Prem Prakash

I content myself with the fact that the general system of our trade is a system of selfishness, is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature much less by the sentiments of love and heroism but is a system of distrust not of giving, but of taking advantage.

~ Joshua Ferris

I always say that creating positive change in the world starts with just one person: you. That’s why it is so important to learn to be the right kind of selfish. It’s essential to learn the art of taking care of ourselves so that we can have the energy and the willpower to take care of each other and the world that we live in

~ Lizzie Velásquez

The tide seldom shifts in favor of a selfish individual.

~ Carlos Wallace

Our enemy is [. . .] and all people like him, who never question their motives or doubt their desires. They are put on this earth to cause misery, because what they take so freely for themselves comes always at great cost to others.

~ Susan Rivers

Unless we recognize a higher power to whom we are responsible and who observes and knows our actions, we will not transcend the selfishness of our character and the subjectivity of our intellect. If each person is the final arbiter of right and wrong, then ‘right’ for him or her will be what he or she desires, regardless of its consequences for the other inhabitants of Earth.

~ Daniel Friedmann

Selfishness at the expense of others is bad. Self-care for the betterment of others is good.

~ Richie Norton

Loneliness had made the Queen bitter, bitterness had made her selfish, and selfishness had made her suspicious. --The Changeling

~ Kate Morton

It’s really good to love yourself, just don’t love yourself so much in a way that you will not be able to see anyone else!

~ Raouf Ayoub

The terrible poverty of pride is that there is nothing that can be taken in selfishness which will exceed what is received when nothing is expected and everything is offered.

~ James Castleton

Knowledge is power is time is money. Meaning that if I shared knowledge, it would tantamount to sharing power or money.

~ Robert Thier

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)

~ William F. Buckley Jr.

...For I do now know that it is cowardly. We do not have the right to think only of poetry on this earth. It is magical, but utterly selfish.

~ Hélène Berr