Top 100 Quotes About Selfishness
#1. The vital Christian arouses opposition because he is a standing rebuke to the selfishness and sin of those around him.
John Hagee
#2. By the time we were knit in our mothers' wombs, our lives were like open books before Him
every sentence read, every paragraph indented, every chapter titled, every page numbered. He knew it all in advance
all the sin, all the selfishness, every weakness. Yet He chose to love us
lavishly.
Beth Moore
#3. It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#4. A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for?
H.M. Forester
#5. Lust is raw selfishness. It's all about my wants, my needs, my pleasure. Most love songs are actually lust songs.
Rick Warren
#6. Our selfishness will condemn us to the worst suffering that we ourselves have invented - loneliness.
Paulo Coelho
#7. if we have any unforgiveness, bitterness, selfishness, pride, anger, irritation, or resentment in our hearts, our prayers will not be answered.
Stormie O'martian
#8. The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.
Robert E. Ornstein
#9. If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste of time.
Steven Pinker
#10. Happiness begins when selfishness ends.
John Wooden
#11. The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. And if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva's shame wouldn't rise to the bait. He wanted what he'd always wanted, and he'd better just say it, his own worries and fears be damned.
Laini Taylor
#13. Biology without selfishness, is nothing but fiction.
Abhijit Naskar
#15. I was consumed by a selfishness and arrogance that I didn't dare let go of until I found a new persona to hide behind.
Dorothy Koomson
#16. Thread of Selfishness in Web of Life. - Deuteronomy contains much instruction regarding what the law is to us, and the relation we shall sustain to God as we reverence and obey
Ellen G. White
#17. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet was a smoky wasteland, they'd be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell.
Garrison Keillor
#18. 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.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#19. What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.
Len Deighton
#20. It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone.
Owen Feltham
#21. We performers are monsters. We are a totally different, far-out race of people. I totally and completely admit, with no qualmsat all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice.
Leontyne Price
#23. I think that in today's world, by nature, we are all self-centered. And that often leads to selfishness.
Gary Chapman
#24. What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it's too late?
Elizabeth Gilbert
#25. The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,
each his own interest.
George Berkeley
#26. There are probably only a certain number of people who can understand or tolerate how long a job will take and what demands it puts on you. And why should they? It breeds a strange kind of selfishness immersing yourself in a character for so long.
Dominic Cooper
#27. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.
George MacDonald
#28. It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,
a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
Richard Whately
#29. Be not in the desire of thine own ease.
Saadi
#30. Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.
Anne Rice
#31. And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.
Karen Armstrong
#32. I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself.
Napoleon Hill
#33. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
Samuel Smiles
#34. He wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic.
Charles Dickens
#35. There's always a little decency in the worst places ... and always a little secret selfishness in the best.
Joe Hill
#36. Too often there is this sinister greed that pulls at my coattails, subtly whispering in the ear of my soul that it is within my rights to tuck away a few dark trinkets to toy with when the tedium of righteous living gets a bit boring. But God would suggest that I empty my pockets.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#37. The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. That might sound selfish, but it's not. Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness through extreme selfishness. A normal person needs to treat others well in order to enjoy life.
Scott Adams
#38. Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it?
Paul J. Zak
#39. Even with all its positive attributes, capitalism in its imperialistic form is the most treacherous system mankind ever devised. It is driven by a selfishness that has an almost religious underlining to it.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
#40. 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
#41. We Are Always Scared of Wild Beasts, Yet We Are Unaware About The Wildest Beast Within Us Which Does More Harm Than The Ordinary One ...
Muhammad Imran Hasan
#42. Shouldn't those who were born to expect death be the sole subjects of gleaning?" went the popular wisdom. But it was bigotry masquerading as wisdom. Selfishness posing as enlightenment.
Neal Shusterman
#43. 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
#44. Selfishness draws men into a spiritual vacuum where, absorbed in self service, they shut out all others.
William R. Bradford
#45. How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#46. Camera but no selfies, which represent selfishness and egotism. Social media? Again: not really me.
Maurice Levy
#47. It is, I think, a far lesser offense to blatantly ignore God's directions for our lives rather than arrogantly think ourselves shrewd enough to be able to bend them to our liking without breaking them and therefore breaking ourselves.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#48. There is a deep - and usually frustrated - desire in the heart of everyone to act with benevolence rather than selfishness, and one fine instance of generosity can inspire dozens more.
Xenophon
#49. To be wrecked begins with an experience that pulls you out of your comfort zone and self-centeredness, whether you want it or not.
Jeff Goins
#50. There is a big, beautiful world that could be destroyed by selfishness and foolishness. We musicians have it within our power to help save it. In a small way, every single one of us counts.
Pete Seeger
#51. It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden
#52. We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.
Neal A. Maxwell
#53. A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Richard Dawkins
#54. [Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.
Aristophanes
#55. There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.
Joe Abercrombie
#56. The highest form of selfishness is that of the man who is content to go to heaven alone.
J.C. Ryle
#57. If you could leave your selfishness, you would see how you've been torturing your soul.
Rumi
#58. God's eyes readily see beyond our actions, for our actions are simply fear and selfishness pretending to be us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#59. But as to women, who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy with their estate has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love, their virtue, beauty, education, but form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.
Lord Byron
#60. The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
Eric Hoffer
#61. You're weightless. The world hasn't touched you yet. You're not heavy with the weight of pain, and guilt, and selfishness.
Kandi Steiner
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. How tolerable misfortunes appear when they affect only other people! How strong the human body seems when it's another man's flesh that bleeds! How easy it is to look death in the face when it's another man's turn!
Irene Nemirovsky
#67. We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.
Elizabeth Goudge
#68. Human selfishness being what it is, almost everyone kept the pleasant task for themselves.
Steven Pinker
#69. But we will probably never see this, never move from original selfishness to universal charity and unselfishness, without the intermediate step of the family.
Peter Kreeft
#70. The motivation for love in the world is selfishness, but the motivation for God's love is the well-being of others
Sunday Adelaja
#71. 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
#72. National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
Samuel Smiles
#74. Stanbrook once told me," he said, "that suicide is the worst kind of selfishness, as it is often a plea to specific people who are left stranded in the land of the living, unable for all eternity to answer the plea
Mary Balogh
#75. If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!
Joyce Meyer
#76. Being a 'good' parent is more about the parent, and, less about the 'supposedly-could-have-been-bad' child.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#77. 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
#78. The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest.
Emile Souvestre
#79. It is not selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from non-love; it is the aim of the action.
M. Scott Peck
#81. Let us reject violence and selfishness which could destroy our country's unity.
Mwai Kibaki
#83. You are chosen to be faithful women of God in our day, to stand above pettiness, gossip, selfishness, lewdness, and all other forms of ungodliness. Recognize your divine birthright as daughters of our Heavenly Father.
Howard W. Hunter
#84. To have everything and feel nothing was the worst kind of selfishness.
Jamie McGuire
#85. If there's anything I'd like to preach about, the loudest, other than the Gospel, it's selfishness. If there's anything I'd like to impress upon the hearts and minds of my people, it's to get out of the self life.
Jack Hyles
#86. I think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature supposedly attained there, merely cunning selfishness.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#87. Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.
Meister Eckhart
#88. We have developed a culture of self-interest, self-gratification, self-aggrandizement, and utter selfishness. We have institutionalized and disseminated these values as never before in human history.
Michael C. Hill
#89. There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form of selfishness.
Anna Quindlen
#91. Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.
Douglas Horton
#92. Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we ... recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.
Dinah Maria Murlock Craik
#93. Though the modern world may know a million secrets, the ancient world knew one - and that was greater than the million; for the million secrets breed death, disaster, sorrow, selfishness, lust, and avarice, but the one secret confers life, light, and truth.
Manly P. Hall
#94. This selfishness of your suicide displeased you. But, all things considered, the lull of death won out over life's painful commotion.
Edouard Leve
#95. 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
#96. is not a competitive event; it is a cooperative venture. The Spirit distributes his gifts so that believers are compelled to rely on each other in unity, not to contend with each other in selfishness.
Standard Publishing
#97. Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
William Howard Taft
#98. Men shouldn't fear or hate what they do not know but study it and share it instead. It is both an act of selfishness and cruelty to seek for the destruction of wisdom and the wise, but also to keep silent when witnessing it happening.
Daniel Marques
#99. But selfishness can take on many disguises. It can also be about defending and trying to prove your own belief system while denying there could be value in the beliefs of others.
Karlyle Tomms
#100. Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
David Sloan Wilson
