“Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.”

“There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.”

Lydia Davis (1947) American writer

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

“Love… no such thing.

Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.

Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

“She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

“Love between two people can last a long time if the people love themselves some, and are ready to give love to another person.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

“Love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned. Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“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.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

“All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher