Definition of Egoism at BrainyQuote.com

Definition of Egoism

Egoism

The doctrine of certain extreme adherents or disciples of Descartes and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which finds all the elements of knowledge in the ego and the relations which it implies or provides for.

Excessive love and thought of self; the habit of regarding one's self as the center of every interest; selfishness; -- opposed to altruism.

Related Definitions:

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Egoism Quotations

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
George Eliot

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
George Eliot

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham

For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice.
Erwin Schrodinger

An animal that embarks on forming states without greatly restricting egoism will perish.
Erwin Schrodinger

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Ivan Turgenev

But egoism is more than this. It is the realization by the individual that he is above all institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses to make them his own by accepting them.
John Buchanan Robinson

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?
Eugenio Montale

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.
John Buchanan Robinson

There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense.
John Buchanan Robinson

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Giorgos Seferis