Selfishness is Not a Virtue

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog 

Eric Hoffer did not regard selfishness as a virtue. He belittles the idea of selfishness in Chapter 7, “The Inordinately Selfish,” of his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. He writes:

The inordinately selfish are particularly susceptible to frustration. The more selfish a person, the more poignant his disappointments. It is the inordinately selfish, therefore, who are likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness. 

The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause. And though it be a faith of love and humility they adopt, they can be neither loving nor humble. 

In his book The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms (Chapter 5, “The Readiness to Work”), Hoffer notes that selfishness subsumes self-abnegation:

There is even in the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind in the exercise of self-sacrifice. Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.