Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

In America, we like everyone to know about the good work we're doing anonymously.

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

The egoist does not tolerate egoism.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

Alas,we who wanted kindness, could not be kind ourselves.

Anti-theses.- The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. - In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.

It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.

The individualist is an atom thinking about himself (Thank God I am not as other men); the communist, too often, is an atom having ecstasies of self-denial (Thank God I am one in a crowd).

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.

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

There's no such thing as altruism.

I wish you well and I hope it will be a huge hit, because that would be very good for me. And if, God forbid, it's a terrible flop, well that would be very good for me.

I live by the code 'Kill them with kindness, blood everywhere;' for me, it's always about being the nicest kind of guy.

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.

I don't know why we're not interested in seeing good people. I think we like seeing good people, but only if bad things happen to them. Which is weird, isn't it?

Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick.

Hollywood is a place of great irony at all times.