The Danger of Wanting to Be Important

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them … or they do not see it, or they justify it … because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

T. S. Elliot, The Cocktail Party (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 111.