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      "text": "It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.",
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      "text": "It seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie in ground where mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there can tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?",
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      "text": "He was firmly convinced of his uniqueness in the universe and his general superiority to it, although he was occasionally bothered by the universe’s lack of appreciation.",
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      "text": "“Well, he seems to be on our side,” Bat said optimistically.\n\n“Nobody’s on any side but his own,” Brazil snapped back. “Not you, not me, not anybody.”",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-dowd/thank-god-for-evolution/l-et-me-slip",
      "text": "[L]et me slip into pride or arrogance, deception or inauthenticity, blame or resentment, or stingy, ungrateful self-centeredness, and I won't have to worry about burning in some otherworldly hell after I die. I'll be supping with Satan right here and now.",
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      "text": "The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family. Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.",
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      "text": "The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption-driven mind-set masquerades as \"quality of life\" but eats us from within. It is as if we've been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.",
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      "text": "We set ourselves up as arbiters of what is good when often our standards of goodness are driven by narrow interests, by what we want.",
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      "text": "The all-consuming passion of Wolsey for Wolsey was hot enough to scorch all England.",
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      "text": "His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centred as a gyroscope. (p. 29)",
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      "text": "Betrayal wears a lot of different hats. You don't have to make a show of it like Brutus did, you don't have to leave anything visible jutting from the base of your best friend's spine, and afterward can stand there straining your ears for hours, but you won't hear a cock crow either. No, the most insidious betrayals are done merely by leaving the life jacket hanging in your closet while you lie to yourself that it's probably not the drowning man's size. That's how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world's problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there's no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that's the source of our descent, and it doesn't start in the boardroom or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.",
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      "text": "Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.\n\nWhat precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.\n\nWhat precipitates acts? Belief.\n\nBelief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history’s Horroxes, Boer-haaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?\n\nWhy? Because of this: — one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.\n\nIs this the doom written within our nature?\n\nIf we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "David Mitchell",
        "slug": "david-mitchell",
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      "book": {
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        "slug": "cloud-atlas",
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          "slug": "selfishness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
        },
        {
          "name": "beliefs",
          "slug": "beliefs",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beliefs"
        }
      ],
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(novel)#The_Pacific_Journal_of_Adam_Ewing_(Part_2)",
        "license": {
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:57"
    },
    {
      "id": "370e54a9-3851-496d-a93c-6c20b316cb72",
      "slug": "and-really-erda",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/genevieve-cogman/the-mortal-word/and-really-erda",
      "text": "And, really, Erda had put the basic problem in a nutshell. Everyone here viewed damage to their own particular interest as more significant than damage to anyone else’s. Whatever the scale of the damage.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Genevieve Cogman",
        "slug": "genevieve-cogman",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/genevieve-cogman"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "The Mortal Word",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/genevieve-cogman/the-mortal-word"
      },
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          "slug": "selfishness",
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      ],
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Genevieve_Cogman#The_Mortal_Word_(2018)",
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    {
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      "slug": "i-didnt-bother",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/broken-homes/i-didnt-bother",
      "text": "I didn’t bother calling Nightingale on the mobile I’d got him for Christmas because he only turns it on when he wants to call someone—the new technology being strictly there for his convenience, not anybody else’s.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Ben Aaronovitch",
        "slug": "ben-aaronovitch",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "Broken Homes",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/broken-homes"
      },
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      "page": 77,
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      "topics": [
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          "slug": "selfishness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
        },
        {
          "name": "technological progress",
          "slug": "technological-progress",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technological-progress"
        }
      ],
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    },
    {
      "id": "93d1a74a-5809-45b0-9b4b-65b75e307528",
      "slug": "have-you-noticed",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/moon-over-soho/have-you-noticed",
      "text": "Have you noticed that about journalists—all they really want to talk about is themselves.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Ben Aaronovitch",
        "slug": "ben-aaronovitch",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "Moon Over Soho",
        "slug": "moon-over-soho",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ben-aaronovitch/moon-over-soho"
      },
      "character": null,
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      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 273,
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      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "media",
          "slug": "media",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/media"
        },
        {
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          "slug": "selfishness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
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      ],
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Aaronovitch#Moon_Over_Soho_(2011)",
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    },
    {
      "id": "3cf1f08f-4a17-4fc4-b6c7-476657eea7ed",
      "slug": "political-relations-are",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-v-hamilton/black-power/political-relations-are",
      "text": "Political relations are based on self-interest: benefits to be gained and losses to be avoided. For the most part, man’s politics is determined by his evaluation of material good and evil. Politics results from a conflict of interests, not of consciences.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Charles V. Hamilton",
        "slug": "charles-v-hamilton",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-v-hamilton"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "Black Power",
        "slug": "black-power",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-v-hamilton/black-power"
      },
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
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      "page": 75,
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      "topics": [
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          "slug": "politics",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics"
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        {
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          "slug": "selfishness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
        }
      ],
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_V._Hamilton#Chapter_Three",
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:23"
    },
    {
      "id": "baada5aa-8ada-44b1-a52c-6b595acda2d1",
      "slug": "its-all-pretty",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/plan-for-chaos/its-all-pretty",
      "text": "It's all pretty simple if you don't give a damn who gets hurt in the rush.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "John Wyndham",
        "slug": "john-wyndham",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "Plan for Chaos",
        "slug": "plan-for-chaos",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/plan-for-chaos"
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      "character": null,
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      "page": 11,
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        {
          "name": "cruelty",
          "slug": "cruelty",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cruelty"
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      ],
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Wyndham#Plan_for_Chaos_(2009)",
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    {
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      "slug": "theres-nothing-more",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/the-secret-people/theres-nothing-more",
      "text": "\"There's nothing more egocentric than a cat.\"",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "John Wyndham",
        "slug": "john-wyndham",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham"
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      "book": {
        "title": "The Secret People",
        "slug": "the-secret-people",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-wyndham/the-secret-people"
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      "character": null,
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      "page": 26,
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      "topics": [
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          "slug": "selfishness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
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        {
          "name": "cats",
          "slug": "cats",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cats"
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      ],
      "source": {
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Wyndham#The_Secret_People_(1935)",
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T23:03:04"
    },
    {
      "id": "39c63772-2af4-482d-b8c1-3558de9dc4b7",
      "slug": "until-learning-how",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/until-learning-how",
      "text": "Until learning how to read I had lived in a whole underpopulated world of self-centered, drug-addicted fools, all of us living by our Rules of Privacy in some crazy dream of Self-Fulfillment.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Walter Tevis",
        "slug": "walter-tevis",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis"
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        "title": "Mockingbird",
        "slug": "mockingbird",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird"
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      "page": 244,
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      "topics": [
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          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/selfishness"
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      "slug": "we-had-never",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird/we-had-never",
      "text": "We had never developed a sense of history as such; all we knew, if we ever thought about it, was that there had been others before us and that we were better than they. But no one was ever encouraged to think about anything outside of himself. “Don’t ask; relax.”",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Walter Tevis",
        "slug": "walter-tevis",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis"
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        "title": "Mockingbird",
        "slug": "mockingbird",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-tevis/mockingbird"
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      "slug": "their-system-of-unorganized",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/their-system-of-unorganized",
      "text": "Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is possible.'",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Edward Bellamy",
        "slug": "edward-bellamy",
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        "title": "Looking Backward",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward"
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      "slug": "i-dont-think",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-r-boyett/ariel/i-dont-think",
      "text": "I don’t think I believe Evil exists. I believe selfishness does.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Steven R. Boyett",
        "slug": "steven-r-boyett",
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      "text": "Do you know why this world is as bad as it is? […] it is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doer to light.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Anna Sewell",
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      "text": "It is out of nature that any man should think it good that his own order should be repressed, curtailed, and deprived of its power. If we go among cab-drivers or letter-carriers, among butlers or gamekeepers, among tailors or butchers, among farmers or grazers, among doctors or attorneys, we shall find in each set of men a conviction that the welfare of the community depends upon the firmness with which they, — especially they, — hold their own.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Anthony Trollope",
        "slug": "anthony-trollope",
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        "title": "Phineas Redux",
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      "text": "“why am I so alone, so hard, so cold? I am so weary of myself! It is eating my soul to its core,--self, self, self! I cannot bear this life! I cannot breathe, I cannot live! Will nothing free me from myself?' She pressed her cheek agains the wooden post. 'I want to love! I want something great and pure to lift me to itself! Dear old man, I cannot bear it any more! I am so cold, so hard, so hard; will no one help me!”",
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      "text": "\"I shall expect my husband to have no pleasures but what he shares with me; and if his greatest pleasure of all is not the enjoyment of my company — why — it will be the worse for him — that's all.\"\n\n\"If such are your expectations of matrimony, Esther, you must, indeed, be careful whom you marry — or rather, you must avoid it altogether.\"",
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      "text": "“No, monsieur,” returned Monte Cristo “upon the simple condition that they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me.” “Bravo,” cried Chateau–Renaud; “you are the first man I ever met sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, bravo!”",
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      "slug": "egoism-is-suicide",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivan-turgenev/rudin/egoism-is-suicide",
      "text": "Egoism is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great ... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it the right of self-expression.",
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      "slug": "at-this-festive",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-christmas-carol/at-this-festive",
      "text": "\"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.\"\n\n\"Are there no prisons?\"\n\n\"Plenty of prisons...\"\n\n\"And the Union workhouses.\" demanded Scrooge. \"Are they still in operation?\"\n\n\"Both very busy, sir...\"\n\n\"Those who are badly off must go there.\"\n\n\"Many can't go there; and many would rather die.\"\n\n\"If they would rather die,\" said Scrooge, \"they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.\"",
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        "title": "A Christmas Carol",
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      "slug": "there-is-nothing",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/guy-debord/panegyric/there-is-nothing",
      "text": "There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Guy Debord",
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      "slug": "people-will-generally",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/transition/people-will-generally",
      "text": "People will generally make whatever compromises with the world they think necessary still to convince themselves that they are the most important thing in it.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Iain M. Banks",
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      "slug": "never-underestimate-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata/never-underestimate-the",
      "text": "Never underestimate the sheer selfishness and stupidity of people.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Iain M. Banks",
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        "title": "The Hydrogen Sonata",
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      "slug": "the-only-sin",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/inversions/the-only-sin",
      "text": "The only sin is selfishness.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Iain M. Banks",
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      "slug": "the-curse-which",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/simone-de-beauvoir/the-second-sex/the-curse-which",
      "text": "The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Simone de Beauvoir",
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        "title": "The Second Sex",
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      "slug": "there-is-in-lovers",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/charlotte-bronte/villette/there-is-in-lovers",
      "text": "There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Charlotte Brontë",
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          "name": "falling in love",
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      "slug": "he-was-too",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-beerbohm/zuleika-dobson/he-was-too",
      "text": "He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Max Beerbohm",
        "slug": "max-beerbohm",
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        "title": "Zuleika Dobson",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-beerbohm/zuleika-dobson"
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      "slug": "if-you-are",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/thich-nhat-hanh/the-sun-my-heart/if-you-are",
      "text": "If you are a mountain climber or someone who enjoys the countryside or the forest, you know that forests are our lungs outside of our bodies. Yet we have been acting in a way that has allowed millions of square miles of land to be deforested, and we have also destroyed the air, the rivers, and parts of the ozone layer. We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of some comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self. If we want to change the situation, we must begin by being our true selves. To be our true selves means we have to be the forest, the river, and the ozone layer. If we visualize ourselves as the forest, we will experience the hopes and fears of the trees. If we don't do this, the forests will die, and we will lose our chance for peace. When we understand that we inter-are with the trees, we will know that it is up to us to make an effort to keep the trees alive.",
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        "name": "Thich Nhat Hanh",
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        "title": "The Sun My Heart",
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      "text": "You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Zadie Smith",
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        "title": "White Teeth",
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      "slug": "he-thought-she",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/beyond-the-gap/he-thought-she",
      "text": "He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Harry Turtledove",
        "slug": "harry-turtledove",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove"
      },
      "book": {
        "title": "Beyond the Gap",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-in-at-the-death/glad-youre-back",
      "text": "“Glad you’re back safe. I heard you were wounded—happy it wasn’t too serious.”\n\n“Yeah.” The only wound that wasn’t serious was the one that happened to the other guy.",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-drive-to-the-east/dont-be-dumber",
      "text": "Don’t be dumber than you can help, all right? If you reckon you’re the only one in the world with troubles, what does that make you? Besides a damn fool, I mean?",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/small-minds-cannot",
      "text": "Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves. Such minds hardly rise into religion at all.",
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        "name": "James George Frazer",
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      "text": "In...the book of Egoism, it is written, possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "George Meredith",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/j-m-coetzee/disgrace/you-behave-as-if-everything",
      "text": "You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through.",
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      "author": {
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      "slug": "and-that-very",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-margarets/and-that-very",
      "text": "And that very strong one with the hammer. That might be Thor.\n\n“Actually,” the Gardener murmured,” he is Thor, Hercules, Apollo, Gilgamesh, Adonis, Osiris, Krishna, virtually every young male deity known for strength, beauty, and intrepidity, just as my colleague, Mr. Weathereye, is Odin, Jupiter, Jove, Allah, Jehovah, or any other ancient male deity known for wisdom, power, and prescience. And the old woman there, Lady Badness, is Erda, Norn, Moira, Sophia, the wisewoman who can detect the pattern in the weavings of happenstance before mankind here’s the shuttle coming.”\n\n“I’m named for her?” asked Sophia.\n\n“For her, yes. And I, Gardener, am also Demeter, Cybele, Freya, Earth Mother, Corn Goddess, a thousand names of female deities wise in the ways of growing things, solicitous of women and children, caretakers of the beasts of the field and the woods. Some of us Members are sizable, for many mortals, including humans, believe in strength, and power, and nurture, and wisdom.”\n\n“What are all those hunched-up things?” asked Sophia.\n\nThe Gardener shook her head.” Sophia, those are the gods many humans prefer. They are hunched from ages of sitting on peoples shoulders, whispering encouragement.”\n\n“But they’re tiny!” she said, in disbelief.\n\n“Many humans prefer tiny gods,” said the Gardener. “Tiny gods of limited preoccupations…”\n\n“Limited to what?” I demanded.\n\n“To mankind, of course. And to each believer, particularly. Each human wants god to be his or her best friend, and it’s easier to imagine god being your best friend if he is a tiny little god interested only in a tiny world that’s only a kind of vestibule to an exclusive little heaven.”\n\n“Some of them are yelling,” said Sophia.\n\n“Oh, yes. Those are hellfire gods. Since there is no supernatural hell, they never really send anyone there, but their sources get enormous pleasure, thinking about it.”",
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      "text": "You felt something huge and marvelous of which you are part, and in the moments you described, you forgot yourself for you were one with your world and with the sky above it, and even the stars looking down. There is nothing larger or more wonderful than that. Still, there are those who would prefer self. They will accept any belief, no matter how foolish, if it guarantees them personal immortality. I know people like that. But there are others who know themselves well enough to realize how limiting that is.",
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      "text": "Don’t you find that predators are those who most often assert absolute rights to personal freedoms?",
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      "slug": "as-our-sages",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/the-fresco/as-our-sages",
      "text": "As our sages have said, youth builds a universe with self at the center.",
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        "slug": "sheri-s-tepper",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/beauty/we-have-been",
      "text": "We have been thwarted at every turn by god. Not the real God. A false one which has been set up by man to expedite his destruction of the earth. He is the gobble-god who bids fair to swallow everything in the name of a totally selfish humanity. His ten commandments are me first (let me live as I please), humans first (let all other living things die for my benefit), sperm first (no birth control), birth first (no abortions), males first (no women’s rights), my culture/tribe/language/religion first (separatism/terrorism), my race first (no human rights), my politics first (lousy liberals/rotten reactionaries), my country first (wave the flag, the flag, the flag), and, above all, profit first.",
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      "text": "Some can see no farther than their mirrors. What wears another face must go unseen.",
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      "text": "“Also, the people who’ve left tended to be those who thought man was more important than other parts of creation, and themselves more important than other men,” Africa mused. “Me-and-my-image devotees. Human fertility worshippers. The kind of people who will happily kill other species to make room for more humans, advocates of the old ‘fill up the world and ruin it’ philosophy.”",
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      "text": "No one thought about what kind of society we were building with such stupid decisions. People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people’s children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn’t hurt them!",
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      "text": "Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else's? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.",
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      "text": "Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.",
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      "text": "“Each of us remains convinced that our own subjective viewpoint is more urgent than anyone else’s—indeed, even more valid than the objective matrix that underlies so-called reality. After all, the subjective view is a grand theater. To be hero of an ongoing drama. It’s why ideologies and bigotries survive against all evidence or logic.\n\n“Subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature’s champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet…and to our species nearly wiping itself out.”",
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      "text": "The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.",
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      "text": "I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.",
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      "text": "The attitude of the average person to the world they live in is completely selfish. When I take people round to see my animals, one of the first questions they ask (unless the animal is cute and appealing) is, \"what use is it?\" by which they mean, \"what use is it to them?\" To this one can reply \"What use is the Acropolis?\" Does a creature have to be of direct material use to mankind in order to exist? By and large, by asking the question \"what use is it?\" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own.",
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      "text": "I seriously wished—selfish as it may appear—that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century, or, at all events, to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question.",
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      "text": "They would fail. We would always fail. We weren’t built to do anything but fail. We had the wrong kind of motives and we couldn’t change them. We had a built-in short-sightedness and an inherent selfishness and a self-concern that made it impossible to step out of the little human rut we traveled.",
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      "text": "To my horror I began to cry...a great cloud of black guilt, knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. One day she had said “when you love me (and she had not meant ‘make love to me’) it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am”; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and give me a sense of responsibility towards her...My monstrous crime was Adam’s, the oldest and most vicious of all – male selfishness...Something far worse than lèse majesté. Lèse-humanité.",
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      "text": "“You are a selfish thing!” cried Colin.\n\n“What are you?” said Mary. “Selfish people always say that. Any one is selfish who doesn’t do what they want.”",
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      "text": "The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming.",
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      "text": "\"We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is—for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breath air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself—and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must first know how to say the 'I'. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless. [...] You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can't help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you'll come back to me. They won't destroy me, Dominique. And they won't destroy you. You'll win, because you've chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I'll wait for you. I love you. I'm saying this now for all the years we'll have to wait. I love you, Dominique.\"",
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      "text": "“A king has soldiers, servants, messengers, lieutenants. He governs through his servants. Where are the servants of this—Anti-king?”\n\n“In our minds, lad. In our minds. The traitor, the self; the self that cries I want to live; let the world burn so long as I can live! The little traitor soul in us, in the dark, like the worm in the apple.”",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-left-hand-of-darkness/he-was-a-hard",
      "text": "He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.",
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      "text": "It is sad that so lovely a plane must not be visited, fortunate that those who have glimpsed it have been able to describe it for us. Still, some people go there. Ordinarily selfish people justify their invasion of Zuehe by the familiar expedient of considering themselves as not like all those other people who go to Zuehe and spoil it. Extremely selfish people go to Zuehe to boast about it, precisely because it is fragile, destructible, therefore a trophy.",
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      "text": "What’s not fair is that our society rewards selfishness. That’s not fair.",
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      "text": "Contrary to popular opinion, love is not altruistic. [...] Love is the height of selfishness: the self attempts to enrich itself through the absorption of another being. Love is being psychically wide-open to another. It is a situation of total emotional vulnerability. Therefore it must be not only the incorporation of the other, but an exchange of selves. Anything short of a mutual exchange will hurt one or the other party. There is nothing inherently destructive about this process. A little healthy selfishness would be a refreshing change. Love between two equals would be an enrichment, each enlarging himself through the other: instead of being one, locked in the cell of himself with only his own experience and view, he could participate in the existence of another – an extra window on the world. This accounts for the bliss that successful lovers experience: lovers are temporarily freed from the burden of isolation that every individual bears.",
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      "text": "\"What was the self-sacrifice?\"\n\n\"I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes.\"\n\n\"Why was that self-sacrifice?\"\n\n\"Because they were mine!\" said Ford, crossly.\n\n\"I think we have different value systems.\"\n\n\"Well, mine's better.\"",
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      "text": "[Zaphod] had seen the whole universe stretching to infinity around him—everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Being told by a computer is another.",
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      "text": "\"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.\"",
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      "text": "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made....",
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      "text": "Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.",
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      "text": "“Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.” – Jack",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/carl-von-clausewitz/on-war/obstinacy-is-a-fault",
      "text": "Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.",
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      "slug": "from-now-on-im-thinking",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-heller/catch-22/from-now-on-im-thinking",
      "text": "“From now on I'm thinking only of me.” Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?”\n\n“Then,” said Yossarian, “I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”",
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      "slug": "for-the-most",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/the-winter-of-our-discontent/for-the-most",
      "text": "For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.",
      "language": "en",
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        "name": "John Steinbeck",
        "slug": "john-steinbeck",
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        "title": "The Winter of Our Discontent",
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      "slug": "victors-unfortunate-choice",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/burning-bright/victors-unfortunate-choice",
      "text": "Victor's unfortunate choice it was always to mis-see, to mis-hear, to misjudge. He read softness into her because of the softness of her voice, when she was only remembering. His was the self-centered chaos of childhood. All looks and thoughts, loves and hatreds, were directed at him. Softness was softness towards him, weakness was weakness in the face of his strength. He preheard answers and listened not. He was full-coloured and brilliant—all outside of him was pale.",
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        "title": "Burning Bright",
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      "slug": "a-curious-paradox",
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      "text": "A curious paradox: people have only the narrowest private interest in mind when they act, yet they are at the same time more than ever determined in their behavior by the instincts of the mass. ... The diversity of individual goals is immaterial in face of the identity of the determining forces.",
      "language": "en",
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      "slug": "let-us-suppose",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/let-us-suppose",
      "text": "Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.",
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      "slug": "every-man-as-the",
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      "text": "Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.",
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      "slug": "when-the-happiness",
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      "text": "When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self–love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many. The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren. Neither is this sentiment confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed upon every tolerably good soldier, who feels that he would become the scorn of his companions, if he could be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating, either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/every-man-is-no-doubt",
      "text": "Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.",
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      "slug": "theres-more-to-being",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/rabbit-at-rest/theres-more-to-being",
      "text": "There's more to being a human being than having your own way.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "John Updike",
        "slug": "john-updike",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike"
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      "slug": "now-nuns-have",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-updike/rabbit-at-rest/now-nuns-have",
      "text": "Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "John Updike",
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      "slug": "the-young-are",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies/the-salterton-trilogy/the-young-are",
      "text": "The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Robertson Davies",
        "slug": "robertson-davies",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/robertson-davies"
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        "title": "The Salterton Trilogy",
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:44:14"
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      "slug": "as-i-was",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/don-marquis/archy-and-mehitabel/as-i-was",
      "text": "as i was crawling\n\nthrough the holes in\n\na swiss cheese\n\nthe other\n\nday it occurred to\n\nme to wonder\n\nwhat a swiss cheese\n\nwould think if\n\na swiss cheese\n\ncould think and after\n\ncogitating for some\n\ntime i said to myself\n\nif a swiss cheese\n\ncould think\n\nit would think that\n\na swiss cheese\n\nwas the most important\n\nthing in the world\n\njust as everything that\n\ncan think at all\n\ndoes think about itself",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
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      "text": "There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding.",
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      "text": "Selfish men make the best lovers. They're prepared to invest in the women's pleasures so that they can collect an even bigger dividend for themselves.",
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      "text": "They call me a renegade.\n\nThe epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!",
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      "text": "It is all sheer egocentricity: the myth of self triumphant over destiny!",
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      "text": "You espouse a very popular doctrine, ethical pragmatism, which always turns out to be the doctrine of self-interest.",
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      "text": "\"You must all take instructions from me!\" the conscience shrieks, in effect, to all the other mental processes. The other processes try it for a while, note that the conscience is unappeased, that it continues to shriek, and they note, too, that the outside world has not been even microscopically improved by the unselfish acts the conscience has demanded. They rebel at last. They pitch the tyrannous conscience down an oubliette, weld shut the manhole cover of that dark dungeon. They can hear the conscience no more. In the sweet silence, the mental processes look about for a new leader, and the leader most prompt to appear whenever the conscience is stilled, Enlightened Self-interest, does appear. Enlightened Self-interest gives them a flag, which they adore on sight. It is essentially the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones, 'The hell with you, Jack, I've got mine!\"",
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      "text": "Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for the sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment. C'est ça. You don't realize what revolting egoism it is, and that one day it will make you the enemies of the human race.",
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      "slug": "the-pivot-round",
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      "text": "The pivot round which the religious life... revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in—whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually—agree with each other in recognizing personal calls. Religious thought is carried on in terms of personality, this being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. To-day, quite as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.",
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      "text": "Sit back down — and for God's sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice. Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible — because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.",
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      "text": "At birth all of us imagine that we are the universe, and we don't distinguish the boundaries between ourselves and those around us. ...in some social situations, there is the sense that we are central, important. ...there was a natural projection of those attitudes upon the universe.",
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      "text": "The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.",
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      "text": "I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.",
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      "text": "He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.",
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      "text": "I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.",
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      "text": "'Tis only from the selfishness and confin'd generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.",
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      "text": "And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves?",
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      "text": "Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.",
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      "text": "I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and petticoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and bungling sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and hypocritical.",
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      "text": "Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that we alone pursue the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.",
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      "slug": "take-from-our",
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      "text": "Take from our hearts this love of what is noble and you rob us of the joy of life. The mean-spirited man in whom these delicious feelings have been stifled among vile passions, who by thinking of no one but himself comes at last to love no one but himself, this man feels no raptures, his cold heart no longer throbs with joy, and his eyes no longer fill with the sweet tears of sympathy, he delights in nothing; the wretch has neither life nor feeling, he is already dead.",
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      "text": "Go beyond this, and I see nothing but injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood among men; private interest, which in competition necessarily prevails over everything else, teaches all things to adorn vice with the outward show of virtue.",
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      "text": "He found himself now in the agreeable situation of being able to do what was best for others and at the same time what was convenient to himself.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "William Somerset Maugham",
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      "text": "In point of fact, however, they were much more anxious to tell him about their doings than to listen to his.",
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      "author": {
        "name": "William Somerset Maugham",
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        "title": "Christmas Holiday",
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      "text": "Egoism you say? There is nothing more universal than the individual, for what is the property of each is the property of all. Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each. That which we call egoism is the principle of psychic gravity, the necessary postulate. \"Love thy neighbor as thyself,\" we are told, the presupposition being that each man loves himself; and it is not said \"Love thyself.\" And nevertheless, we do not know how to love ourselves.",
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        "name": "Miguel de Unamuno",
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      "text": "\"Sometimes,\" she said, \"they threaten you with something — something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, 'Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.\"",
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      "text": "She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.",
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        "name": "Jane Austen",
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      "text": "He was one of those people who live up to their emotional incomes, who are always taut and tingling with vanity. Hence he had no strength to spare; hence he had no kindness, no geniality; for geniality is almost definable as strength to spare. He had no god-like carelessness; he never forgot himself; his whole life was, to use his own expression, an arrangement. He went in for \"the art of living\"—a miserable trick.",
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      "text": "'Whose side are they on?' said Brocando.\n\n'Sides? Their own, I suppose, just like everyone else.'",
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      "text": "“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”",
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      "text": "The whole world seems to live under the banner: “Freedom is wonderful—but only for me.”",
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        "name": "Isaac Asimov",
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      "text": "“You’re a gang of robbers,” he said once. “You’re seeing how quickly you can loot this planet of its resources, and you don’t give a damn about the next generation.”\n\n“And what,” answered McKenzie, not very originally, “has the next generation ever done for us?”",
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        "name": "Arthur C. Clarke",
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      "text": "To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciousness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.",
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      "text": "Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came the human beings, they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate – for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.",
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