Definition of Selfish

Selfish

Caring supremely or unduly for one's self; regarding one's own comfort, advantage, etc., in disregard, or at the expense, of those of others.

Believing or teaching that the chief motives of human action are derived from love of self.

Related Definitions:

Action, Advantage, Are, At, Believing, Caring, Chief, Comfort, Derived, Disregard, Expense, For, From, Human, In, Love, Of, One, Or, Own, Regarding, Self, Supremely, Teaching, That, The, Those, Unduly

Selfish Quotations

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

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

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

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

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Jane Austen

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

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

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

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

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Lord Byron

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.
Herbert Spencer

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

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

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

After all, I don't see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.
George Santayana

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

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

I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.
Barbra Streisand

An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
Clara Barton

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

We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.
Mortimer Adler

People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
James Bovard

Sure, I have friends, plenty of friends, and they all come around wantin' to borrow money. I've always been generous with my friends and family, with money, but selfish with the important stuff like love.
Richard Pryor

California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.
David Herbert Lawrence

It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That's why we're here, after all, to help others.
Carol Burnett

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

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
Charles Dudley Warner

I am selfish, but that's an attribute that all artists possess.
Robert Mapplethorpe

I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you?
Shannon Hoon

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