If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

- Ayn Rand

There's no such thing as altruism.

- Andrew Tobias

I don't deny the importance of genetics. However, the fact that I might be altruistic isn't because I have a gene for altruism; the fact that I do something for my children at some cost to myself comes from a history that has operated on me.

- B. F. Skinner

We, all of us, could do a much better job of evoking what someone has called the universal principle of human altruism: the urge in us all to help others who are in danger.

- Bart Starr

Altruism is innate, but it's not instinctual. Everybody's wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.

- David Rakoff

Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales.

- David Mixner

I am an actress, I earn money, I am well-known. I don't think it is altruism to become engaged in humanitarian work. It's the least one can do.

- Emmanuelle Beart

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.

- John Buchanan Robinson

Altruism is one of the most fundamentally social impulses, and doing things for others without expecting anything in return is core to what makes us human. This is why, from the day Facebook Platform launched in 2007, Causes has been honored to be one of the most popular applications, with over 140 million users.

- Joe Green

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

- Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wikipedia flourished partly because it was a shrine to altruism.

- Nicholson Baker

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

- Richard Dawkins

Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance.

- Steven Pinker

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

- Samantha Power