Ayn Rand Quotes About Selfishness

• Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Names, History

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

• Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others.

  Ayn Rand

  Lying, Eye, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.441, Penguin

• Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?

  Ayn Rand

  Selfish, Giving, Desire

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.31, Penguin

• Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Self, Doe

  "Journals of Ayn Rand". Book by Ayn Rand, 1997.

• The attack on "selfishness" is an attack on man's self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.

  Ayn Rand

  Self Esteem, Men, Selfishness

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.10, Penguin

• The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

  Ayn Rand

  Moral Development, Intellectual, Selfishness

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.7, Penguin

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