Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.
How sick one gets of being 'good', how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness.
Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.
As a dancer, I know couples that have stayed married but separated to dance on different continents. Dance in general, but ballet in particular, is such a finite career. You can't do it later in life, and it's something that I think a dancer has to have some selfishness to fulfill.
We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense.
As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.
Selfishness is a quality and not necessarily a bad thing.
The poison of selfishness destroys the world.
We found evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean. For a short time and against a specific set of opponents, some selfish organisms may come out ahead. But selfishness isn't evolutionarily sustainable.