Susan Sontag Quotes

Sympathizing and selfish people are alike, both given to tears.

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

Selfish, arrogant people drive me crazy.

Markets also have a very bad psychological effect. They drive people to a conception of themselves and society in which you're only after your own good, not the good of others and that's extremely harmful.

If there is no humility, love remains blocked.

In short, selfishness is the opposite of love.

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up.

Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to, every time. If it pains them to make a choice - if the choice looks like a 'sacrifice' - you can be sure that it is no nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness... the necessity of deciding between two things you want when you can't have both.

Selfishness comes from poverty in the heart, from the belief that love is not abundant.

Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves.

The stench of the trail of Ego in our History. It is ego - ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

Selfishness is the root of great evil.

Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.

Contempt is egotism in ill- humor.

A man who love only himself and his pleasures is vain, presumptuous, and wicked even from principle.

You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you.

Don't ask others to forgive in you a sin they're dying to commit themselves.

I have never taken the high road, but I tell other people to 'cause then there's more room for me on the low road.

People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard.

In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.