Selfish 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.
Pope Paul VI

Life, Work, Today

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
Khalil Gibran

Wisdom, Laugh, Proud

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

Successful, Else, Once

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

Others, Themselves, Either

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

Life, Family, Great

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.
Russell Brand

Happy, Yourself, Care

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fail, Aim, Sensual

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.
Bryant H. McGill

Liars, Often, High

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
Richard Whately

Good, Neighbor, Pursuing

I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
Marilyn Monroe

Best, Mistakes, Hard

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.
Andrew Jackson

Government, Powerful, Rich

Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.
Herbie Mann

Yourself, Sacrifice, Means

In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage, Moral, Slack

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins

Try, Born, Generosity

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
Tennessee Williams

Alone, Lonely, Seem

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Truth, Mistakes, Difficult

A selfish man is a thief.
Jose Marti

In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way.
Iris Murdoch

Marriage, Person, Giving

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke

Forward, Spirit, Result

Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
William Cowper

Guilt, Principles, Shame

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

Win, Between, Group

A woman asking 'Am I good? Am I satisfied?' is extremely selfish. The less women fuss about themselves, the less they talk to other women, the more they try to please their husbands, the happier the marriage is going to be.
Barbara Cartland

Marriage, Good, Women

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
Florence Nightingale

Lazy, Rather, Themselves

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert

Happiness, Good, Health

False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons.
Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Money, Others, Used

I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.
Barbra Streisand

Beautiful, Simple, Person

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Men, Find, Wolves

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
Thomas Szasz

Yourself, Self, Others

I think I could go away tomorrow. I've already accomplished something. It's such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.
Jim Carrey

Business, Tomorrow, Sick

It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.
Mortimer Adler

Love, Give, Rather

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