Selfishness is a commonly observed human trait that revolves around an individual's excessive focus on their own needs and desires. Many quotes emphasize the negative aspects of selfishness, highlighting how it can hinder personal growth and harm relationships. These quotes often stress the importance of considering the well-being of others and promote selflessness as a more virtuous and fulfilling way of living.
Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects. — William Wilberforce
Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice. — Herbie Mann
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's. — Richard Whately
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. — Oscar Wilde
Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles. — Harry S. Truman
Selfishness is never so exquisitely selfish as when it is on its knees. ... Self turns what would otherwise be a pure and powerful prayer into a weak and ineffective one. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
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
It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures. — Robert Greene
I am selfish, but that's an attribute that all artists possess. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire. — Philip Larkin
Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves. — Stephen Kendrick
Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self. — Anton Chekhov
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure. — Jane Austen
Short Selfishness Quotes
I'm just the mere shadow of my former selfishness. I crave the silhouette of your kiss. — Elvis Costello
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. — Mother Teresa
We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness. — Booker T. Washington
If you don't like me, remember it's mind over matter.
I don't mind, and you don't matter. — Dr. Seuss
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. — Napoleon Hill
I got a dream that's worth more than my reality. — Big Sean
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. — Mahatma Gandhi
People are generally irrational, unreasonable and selfish. They deserve to be loved, anyway. — Mother Teresa
Every day, for at least fifteen minutes, be selfish, and enjoy some time for you. — Rangan Chatterjee
If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
Greed And Selfishness Quotes
True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed. — Dalai Lama
Cultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of lust, hatred, greed, selfishness, and jealousy. Then only you can manifest it externally. Then only, those who come in contact with you, will be benefited by your vibrations of peace and harmony. — Sivananda
The inescapable fact is that when we build a society based on greed, selfishness, and ruthless competition, the fruits we can expect to reap are economic insecurity at home and international discord abroad. — Tommy Douglas
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.
Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see - Egoism, Arrogance, Conceit, Selfishness, Greed, Lust, Intolerance, Anger, Lying, Cheating, Gossiping and Slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then will be ready to fight the enemy you can see. — Al-Ghazali
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. — Dalai Lama
The covetous man is good to none and worst to himself. —
It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting our high technology from weaponry to livingry.
I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am. — Richard Hammond
As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live--we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love. The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self. — Sayings
As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel. — Rick Danko
Greed pulls people in, and fear pushes them out. — Naved Abdali
Self Love And Selfishness Quotes
People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. — Mother Teresa
Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you. — Karl Lagerfeld
A trustworthy marriage has weathered temptation and anger and jealousy, resentment, self-righteousness and a little bit of selfishness. When you get over and get through that, then maybe you can see the light to love. — Ruby Dee
Fear comes fromt the selfish idea of cutting one's self off from the universe.
Love is the key to the mystery. Love by its very nature is not selfish, but generous. It seeks not its own, but the good of others. The measure of love is not the pleasure it gives-that is the way the world judges it-but the joy and peace it can purchase for others. — Fulton J. Sheen
We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves. — Paul Valery
Loving yourself has nothing to do with being selfish, self-centered or self-engrossed. It means that you accept yourself for what you are. Loving yourself means that you accept responsibility for your own development, growth and happiness. — Iyanla Vanzant
It is self-love and its offspring self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as if in a delicious dream, to hell. — Christian Scriver
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love. — Ayn Rand
A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love. — James Mackintosh
Some, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, have a hard time loving anyone, even themselves, because of their selfishness. Love seeks to give rather than to get. Charity towards and compassion for others is a way to overcome too much self-love — James E. Faust
Love And Selfishness Quotes
Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense. — Richard Dawkins
We are all making a crown for Jesus out of these daily lives of ours, either a crown of golden, divine love, studded with gems of sacrifice and adoration, or a thorny crown, filled with the cruel briars of unbelief, or selfishness, and sin. — Aimee Semple McPherson
Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love. — Sri Yukteswar Giri
Eternal Trinity... mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being. — St. Catherine of Siena
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. — Mao Zedong
I am in love with girls that are bad and naughty and badass, and a little selfish, but I like to watch from a respectful distance! — Dreama Walker
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it. — Stephen Colbert
Sure, I have friends, plenty of friends, and they all come around wantin' to borrow money. I've always been generous with my friends and family, with money, but selfish with the important stuff like love. — Richard Pryor
Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. — Mary Cholmondeley
Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme. — Nikolai Berdyaev
Human Selfishness Quotes
Leadership means firmness, not harshness or bullying; understanding, not weakness; justice, not irresponsible freedom; humaneness, not intolerance; generosity, not selfishness; pride, not egotism. — Omar N. Bradley
Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year. Always hold on to the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Be obedient and eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and your country, and you will move the world. — Swami Vivekananda
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals. — E. O. Wilson
Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion. — John Amos Comenius
I want to live in a world where every person gives far more than they take. — Markiplier
An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness. — Clara Barton
Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness. — Alveda King
Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo. — Hilda Doolittle
I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children. — Katharine Hepburn
If it’s you and me against the world, then so be it. — Jay-Z
Selfishness And Greed Quotes
We are close to God when we are close to people. If we think of God as something in favor of the betterment of human beings, and if we act in a way that brings about that betterment-if we do not cling to riches, selfishness, or greed-then I believe we are getting closer to God. — Daniel Ortega
I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. — Dalai Lama
Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual. — William Graham Sumner
It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. — Jeremy Jackson
Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things. — Theodore Roosevelt
Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere — Blaise Pascal
The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few. — John L. Lewis
Kindness, love, patience, understanding, and unity will increase as we serve, while intolerance, jealousy, envy, greed, and selfishness decrease or disappear. The more we give of ourselves, the more our capacity to serve, understand, and love will grow. — Carlos H. Amado
The age of selfishness and greed is over. The age of kindness and generosity is underway. — Laurence Overmire
The end of knowledge is wisdom The end of culture is perfection The end of wisdom is freedom The end of education is character. And character consists of eagerness to renounce one's selfish greed. — Sai Baba
Selfishness And Pride Quotes
If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that. — Mother Teresa
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world. — M. Scott Peck
We cannot free ourselves from pride and selfish ambition; a divine rescue is absolutely necessary. — C. J. Mahaney
Our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express. — George A. Smith
Marriage is one of the most humbling, sanctifying journeys you will ever be a part of. It forces us to wrestle with our selfishness and pride. But it also gives us a platform to display love and commitment. — Francis Chan
This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir'd by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity. — Bernard de Mandeville
Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. 'How everything affects me' is the center of all that matters-self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking. — Ezra Taft Benson
If we continue to seek learning to serve God and His children better, it is a blessing of great worth. If we begin to seek learning to exalt ourselves alone, it leads to selfishness and pride, which will take us away from eternal life. — Henry B. Eyring
Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined. — Henry Home, Lord Kames
In the final analysis our greatest problem with holiness is not that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are rebellious. We are selfish , that's our problem. And the fact that we often won't admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes. — Floyd McClung
Selfish Quotes
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Millennials are often portrayed as apathetic, disinterested, tuned out and selfish. None of those adjectives describe the Millennials I've been privileged to meet and work with. — Chelsea Clinton
Any opposition not based on rationalism or science or experience will one day or other, reveal the fraud, selfishness, lies and conspiracies. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. — Theodore Roosevelt
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. — Thomas Sowell
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes. — Andrew Jackson
I'm going to be meeting with people today who talk too much - people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won't be surprised or disturbed, for I can't imagine a world without such people. — Marcus Aurelius
Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. — Corrie Ten Boom
All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live. — Swami Vivekananda
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Being Selfish Quotes
It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. — Richard Buckminster Fuller
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. — Woodrow Wilson
Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be. — William Clark
Most men worry about their own bellies and other people's souls, when we all ought to be worried about our own souls and other people's bellies. — Yisroel Salanter
Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing. — Herbie Mann
It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people. Hugh Hefner Legacy — Hugh Hefner
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself. — Kahlil Gibran
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. — Mother Teresa
To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate. — Michael Jordan
I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians. — Samuel Marinus Zwemer
Selfish Person Quotes
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today. — Ralph Ransom
I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven. — Barbra Streisand
I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you? — Shannon Hoon
Scientists have discovered that the small, brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy. — Natalie Angier
Even at a large corporation, you’re essentially the only person who looks out for your own best interests. — Paul Jarvis
Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realize you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully. — Marjorie Holmes
Coercion is evil precisely because it eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another. — Friedrich August von Hayek
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. — Tennessee Williams
It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish. — Ralph Waldo Trine
Selfish People Quotes
Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves. — Gordon B. Hinckley
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. — Pope John Paul II
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature. — John Von Neumann
It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity. — Richard Yates
There are many selfish people who are extremely original, then they take those pure ideas and use them to raise themselves up, that is an insincere move. — Daniel Smith
Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time. — Mahatma Gandhi
Shortsighted things that people sometimes do for their individual self-interest don’t tend to work out well in the long run. — Edward O. Thorp
I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves. — John Wayne
Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears. — Leigh Hunt
Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution. — Chris Christie
Selfish Love Quotes
Self-care is never a selfish act - it is only good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. — Parker J. Palmer
Love is the most selfish of all the passions. — Alexandre Dumas
Erotic or sexual love can truly be love if it is not selfishly sexual or lustful. — Mortimer Adler
The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself. — Brianna Wiest
To practice Zen Buddhism is to train oneself to eliminate hatred, anger and selfishness and to develop loving-kindness towards all. — Thich Thien-An
Every selfish, sinful, or indulgent choice I make today is sowing a seed that will reap a multiplied harvest. And every act of obedience is a seed that will produce a multiplied harvest of blessing in my life and in the lives of those I love. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Everywhere I've been, I've been the best player. I love being a leader, and I love being the best. I just want to get better. It's not about being cocky or selfish or anything like that. It's just how I am. — LeBron James
Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war. — David Dellinger
The biggest coward is a man who awakens a woman’s love with no intention of loving her. — Edward Barber
Many people say that you have to love yourself first before you can love others, but really, if you learn to love others, you will learn to love yourself. — Brianna Wiest
Not Selfish Quotes
Yet one more item is needed to complete success, and that is the rendering of service to others in the community. Without this the mere satisfaction of selfish desire does not reach the top notch. — Robert Baden-Powell
Silence...leads us to make a gift of self rather than a selfishness that has been gift-wrapped ...Silence does not mean running away but rather recollecting ourselves in the open space of God. — Madeleine Delbrel
A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. — Oscar Wilde
The greatest acts of service come from a place of total selflessness, where you’re not doing it because you have to, but because you want to. — Russell Brunson
Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues...you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity...you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that. — Flannery O'Connor
If I had my way, I would not want influence over anyone but my little family. — Enoch Adeboye
I don’t care about anyone not liking me, you b***hes barely like yourselves. — Cardi B
Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. — Eleanor Brown
He wished to keep Lanzetti, who only wants to please La Becchera, but he is wrong, because La Isola and associate are not worth the money. — Antonio Vivaldi
It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom. — R.K. Narayan
Selfish Acts Quotes
It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That's why we're here, after all, to help others. — Carol Burnett
Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it. — Doug Horton
It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise. — Richard Dawkins
To act out of desperation is to act out of instinct. To let oneself get to that point however, is to ignore self-preservation. — Isaac Mashman
Issue a blanket pardon. Forgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Forgiveness is a perfectly selfish act. It sets you free from the past. — Brian Tracy
You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract. — Wayne Dyer
Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross. — Hippolyte Taine
If we knew that god exists, such knowledge would make morality impossible. For, if we acted morally from fear or fright, or confident of a reward, then this would not be moral. It would be enlightened selfishness. — Immanuel Kant
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got. — Steven Pressfield
Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives. — Lawana Blackwell
Selfish Desire Quotes
Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. — Lao Tzu
Let us make a pledge that, if not all day or all night long, at least for a few moments every day, we will make an effort to experience love, love that is free from selfishness, free from desire, free from expectation, love that is complete freedom. — Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest. — Thomas Sowell
The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. — Sam Keen
In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love. — Masashi Kishimoto
Compassion brings fulfillment to the heart. Selfish desires simply agitate the heart. — Radhanath Swami
... a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value. — Albert Einstein
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it. — George Bernard Shaw
A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment. — Albert Einstein
True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife. — Stephen L. Carter
Foolish, selfish people are always thinking of themselves and the result is always negative. Wise persons think of others, helping them as much as they can, and the result is happiness. Love and compassion are beneficial both for you and others. Through your kindness to others, your mind and heart will open to peace. — Dalai Lama
The absolute desire of 'having more' encourages the selfishness that destroys communal bonds among the children of God. It does so because the idolatry of riches prevents the majority from sharing the goods that the Creator has made for all, and in the all-possessing minority it produces an exaggerated pleasure in these goods. — Oscar Romero
Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker. — Jean-Paul Marat
She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one. — Scott Westerfeld
Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest. — Calvin Coolidge
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger. — Simone de Beauvoir
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. — John Kenneth Galbraith
In Conclusion
On the other hand, some quotes offer a different perspective on selfishness. They argue that self-interest and self-preservation are natural instincts that can serve as a driving force for personal success and achievement. These quotes suggest that a healthy dose of self-centeredness is essential for self-care and personal development, but they also caution against crossing the line into excessive selfishness, which can lead to isolation and unhappiness.
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of selfishness quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about selfishness to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
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