Louis MacNeice Quotes

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

It's so easy to be selfish in your 20s and not want to sacrifice.

Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it's clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren't very virtuous.

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

Every forward is selfish, and any forward who tells you he is not selfish is a liar.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

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

That what appears to be egoism so often isn't.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

Human beings place their desires ahead of the collective good.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is 'mine,' and it is not a general one, but is - 'unique,' as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

I'm not comfortable with just me, me, me. That's boring.

There's no such thing as altruism.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

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.

First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self's agenda.

I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

I'm really interested in the difference between selfishness and generosity. It confuses me to no end because sometimes it all just feels like pure indulgence on my part.

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Gorillas are almost altruistic in nature. There's very little if any 'me-itis.' When I get back to civilization, I'm always appalled by 'me, me, me.'