We are selfish, my illness and I. We think only of ourselves. We shape the world around us into messages, into secret whispers spoken only for us.

It's all your fault, Mother,' said Larry austerely; 'you shouldn't have brought us up to be so selfish.' 'I like that!' exclaimed Mother. 'I never did anything of the sort!' 'Well, we didn't get as selfish as this without some guidance,' said Larry.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.

If there is true "Selfishness,' then there is "liberation of the Self', and that indeed is one's own form (the Self).

Realize that your gift does not only belong to you

If people knew how much ill-feeling unselfishness occasions, it would not be so often recommended from the pulpit.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism?

If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

If I am not for myself, who will be?

The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts - the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria - are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.

Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.

If you live only for yourself, you are always in immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

I have often noticed that when chickens quit quarrelling over their food, they often find that there is enough for all of them. I wonder if it might not be the same with the human race.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself.

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself.