Selfishness Quotes

• Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

  Napoleon Hill

  Love, Inspirational, Family

  Napoleon Hill (2008). “The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams”, p.273, Penguin

  147 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

  John Ruskin

  Motivational, Witty, Attitude

  63 Copy quote

• I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Peace, Pain

  The 14th Dalai Lama's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1989.

  73 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Inspirational, Broken Heart

  173 Copy quote

• Our selfishness will condemn us to the worst suffering that we ourselves have invented - loneliness.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Loneliness, Inspiration

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Integrity, Selfish, Creativity

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

  120 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

  William E. Gladstone

  Selfish, Race, Curse

  Speech in Hawarden, Wales, May 28, 1890.

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfishness at the expense of others happiness is demonism.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Others Happiness, Expenses

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1872). “The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.243

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Disappointment

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.232, Princeton University Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Marriage, Hate, Selfish

  Stephen Kendrick, Alex Kendrick (2008). “The Love Dare”, p.11, B&H Publishing Group

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

  Erich Fromm

  Selfish, Love You, Greed

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.105, Open Road Media

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity.

  David O. McKay

  Heart, Night, Hatred

  LDS General Conference, October 1964.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Expression, Ego, Four Agreements

  9 Copy quote

• All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sympathy, Virtue, Consistent

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1853). “Notes: Theological, Political and Miscellaneous”, p.341

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

  John Owen

  Men, Self, Beginnings And Ends

  7 Copy quote

• Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

  Walter Scott

  World, Causes, Contracts

  7 Copy quote

• Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.

  James Anthony Froude

  Selfish, Sage, Fool

  James Anthony Froude (2004). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.443, The Minerva Group, Inc.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Essence, Generosity, Alive

  Charles Caleb Colton (1866). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.38

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.

  Alexander Pope

  Thinking, Young Friends, Young Love

  Alexander Pope (1735). “Letters of Alexander Pope and Several Eminent Persons from the Year 1705 to 1735”, p.74

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Selfish, War, Forgiving

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.78

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Hate, Lying, Important

  12 Copy quote
• 

  One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

  Mother Teresa

  Inspirational, Relationship, Inspiring

  109 Copy quote

• Happiness begins where selfishness ends.

  John Wooden

  Motivational, Basketball, Ucla

  19 Copy quote

• Selfishness, not love, is the actuating motive of the gallant.

  Madame Roland

  Selfish, Love Is, Gallant

  13 Copy quote

• Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.

  Douglas Horton

  Im Sorry, Selfish, I Am Sorry

  27 Copy quote