Oscar Wilde
Writer
"Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to."
Selfishness quotes
Selfishness
302 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Sri Aurobindo
Philosopher, Poet, Politician
"Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism."
Oscar Romero
Archbishop, Activist
"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."
Adam Smith
Philosopher, Economist
"To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Politician, Philosopher, Orator
"It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves."
Quote collection
Selfishness quotes (page 1 of 16)
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"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."
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"If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!"
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"At no time and in no circumstances should a Communist place his personal interests first; he should subordinate them to the interests of the nation and of the masses. Hence, selfishness, slacking, corruption, seeking the limelight, and so on, are most contemptible, while selflessness, working with all one's energy, whole-hearted devotion to public duty, and quiet hard work will command respect."
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"When Christ's love fills our hearts, it puts selfishness on the run."
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"Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self."
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"These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far."
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"And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness."
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"If you could leave your selfishness, you would see how you've been torturing your soul."
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"Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself."
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"When marriage exposes a person's selfishness and sins it's doing what it is meant to do: bringing our sins and wounds to light so we can recognize them, confess them, and begin the healing process."
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"Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.’… ‘Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.’… ‘Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.’… ‘Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.’… ‘And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless."
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"If faith is lacking, it is because there is too much selfishness, too much concern for personal gain. For faith to be true, it has to be generous and loving. Love and faith go together, they complete each other."
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"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow."
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"If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it."
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"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."
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"No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know."
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"The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness."
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"The greatest productive force is human selfishness."
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"Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life."
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"Selfishness has never been admired."
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