Quotes about Selfishness

Are most people so stingy and selfish? I've gained some insight into human nature since I came here, which is good, but I've had enough for the present.

The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

The existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life.

But birth control can also be compelled by sinful motivations. These can include putting lesser priorities like career above higher priorities like family or greedily wanting to make as much income as possible to the exclusion of everything else, and not incur the costs of child raising; being selfish and not wanting to have to care for a child; or immaturely not wanting to take on the responsibility that good parenting requires.

The sad truth is that we live in a world that encourages selfishness, independence, convenience, isolation, and using people rather than loving them.

The avarice of mankind is insatiable.

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

What masters us has become our god; and Paul warns us about those whose "god is their belly" (Philippi- ans 3:19).

We humans have never had the resources in ourselves to love each other well across ethnic lines. There is too much selfishness in all of us.

The reason I use the word reflex to describe these traits of selfishness is that there is zero premeditation before they happen. When these responses happen, they are coming from my fallen nature, not from reflection and resolution. I don't sin out of duty. I sin spontaneously. They are the reflexes of my original, unmortified sinfulness.

Envy is the offspring of pride,

Every soul is surrounded by an atmosphere of its own—an atmosphere, it may be, charged with the life-giving power of faith, courage, and hope, and sweet with the fragrance of love. Or it may be heavy and chill with the gloom of discontent and selfishness, or poisonous with the deadly taint of cherished sin. By the atmosphere surrounding us, every person with whom we come in contact is consciously or unconsciously affected.