The 1970s was the decade of liberation, of anger at injustice and demands for recognition and rights. But over time, the demand for specific rights degraded into a generalized sense of entitlement, the demand for specific recognition into a generalized demand for attention and the anger at specific injustice into a generalized feeling of grievance...

Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.

Beware: It is a quick transition from a nourishing sense of gratitude to a poisonous sense of entitlement.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.

The eye of true equality often seems to have some degree of disrespect for the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty to the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty, although in reality, it’s simply irrespectiveness.

Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty of...

In Missoula, Grizzly football exists in a realm apart, where there is a pervasive sense of entitlement. University of Montana fans, coaches, players, and their lawyers expect, and often receive, special dispensation.

They throw rice at a new marriage, then give him beans in a divorcement.

I was in my early twenties and I was, to be quite honest, a bit of a punk. A swaggering entitled straight white guy who hadn’t but a lot of thought into what it might be like to be anything other than a straight white guy. Because when you’re a straight white guy, you don’t...

The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.Not just wanted, but felt she deserved. If the world didn’t owe her a living, as her mother repeatedly warned her, it owed her a break. She had a strong sense that a better, more exciting, more rewarding life than that which had...

Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.

Who are we to think we deserve anything? What makes us so great? No one is “lucky” to have us. We are all full of it.

If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.

Systemic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right—creating great resentment among the anointed, who feel themselves entitled to rewards for being articulate, politically active, and morally fervent.

It may sound reactionary, I know. But we can all feel it. We’ve changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don’t think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of...

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.

They act as if their religion were a celestial gumball machine, taking no blame for personal failures because they won’t manifest their will in the real world by working for their goals.

I’m on a government watch list. But I’m not interested, because government watches only work twenty minutes out of every hour.

Grace destroys entitlement.

To avoid the cost incurred in pursuing great things we opt for ease and blithely abandon great things. The sheer recklessness of such a pathetically apathetic trade-off will eventually cost us a life squandered, which in the end is the greatest cost of all.

If you do not need something that it is still useful, give it to someone who will appreciate it before you douse it in lighter fluid in hopes Santa Odin will put a new one under your Yule tree.

Making universal prosperity a right is the surest way to universal poverty.

Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both. Rape is a thousand times worse: The ultimate theft of self-control, it often leads to a breakdown in the victim’s...

That sense of entitlement is precisely where we want them because the right to happiness is directly opposed to one of The Adversary’s greatest curatives —gratitude.

Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can’t resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.

Hollywood-Nobody’s impressed by anybody because they’re all too consumed with trying to cover up their own shortcomings. Hollywood is a microcosm of a world of lazy moral ideals and social indifference where every man is trying to convince himself he’s a king.

He did not really understand the game they were playing: in his world, the best way to get something was to deserve it, not to toady to the giver.

pursuit”. To follow, to chase, to inquire, to hunt, to seek. To track in order to overtake and capture. This they don’t do. Instead, having been offered a promise of happiness, they progress to a feeling of entitlement for happiness, then make the leap that happiness should, therefore, be easily won, automatic. There’s too much...

I thought maybe she’d whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible.”Oh, yes,” she purred. “I like this one! Come along, children.””But this isn’t yours,” I pointed out.”My dear, I’m a cat. Everything I see is mine.” She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked....

There’s a whole generation growing up thinking…the government exists to care for them.

Well, we spent enough on gymnastics.”Christ, did we,’ said Maureen. ‘So many lessons.’So many lessons, it was true: art and music and ice-skating; Lily’s every fleeting interest enthusiastically, abundantly indulged. Not to mention the many more practical investments–chemistry tutoring when she struggled, English enrichment when she excelled, SAT courses to propel her to the school...

Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little.

Rumors run wild when one sacrifices for self and temporarily forsakes those who assume entitlement to one’s persona.

Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist’s need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.

You owe me.” For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him, even if it means that her own needs—or her children’s—get neglected. You can pour all your energy into keeping your partner content, but if he has this mind-set, he’ll...

Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff.

When we replace a sense of service and gratitude with a sense of entitlement and expectation, we quickly see the demise of our relationships, society, and economy.

You don’t build a family by tearing down another one.

Instead of communicating “I love you, so let me make life easy for you,” I decided that my message needed to be something more along these lines: “I love you. I believe in you. I know what you’re capable of. So I’m going to make you work.

Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.

A sense of entitlement is a cancerous thought process that is void of gratitude and can be deadly to our relationships.

In a fit of anger he had said to her, “You’ll always be miserable,” to which she thoughtfully replied, “Is that so? It’s impossible to be miserable when you’ve known tragedy and hardship. Both strengthen and refine a person to the point where they may have moments of grief and sadness, but misery is known...