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

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

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.
John Henry Newman

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

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

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.
Anne Sullivan Macy

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

When you go out there and do the things you're supposed to do, people view you as selfish.
Wilt Chamberlain

Whenever I release a record, it's my record. It's not a selfish thought. I may work all year 'round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.
Eberhard Weber

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
Kahlil Gibran

You do have to be fairly selfish when you have a gift. You cannot afford to let too many outside things get in the way.
Sarah Brightman

You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
Anita Brookner

You have to be selfish to be an actor.
Charles Dance

You know, we're really destroying ourselves because we're really making the motivating force of anything we do selfish.
Ralph Steadman

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life.
Henry Cabot Lodge

Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realise you're not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully.
Fay Weldon