Quotes about altruism

"Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive."

"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. […] To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer—in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism."

"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue."

"If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? […] But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism."

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement."

"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self."

"I'm not an altruist, Gail. I don't decide for others."

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

The actions of all group leaders throughout history have had one common element: altruism - common good of the collective. Religious leaders and the "moral" majority condemn the likes of Hitler, Stalin, etc. but their movements and foundations are alike.

The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.