Altruism Examined

"We have never learned to understand what is greatness in man. Self-sacrifice, we droll, is the ultimate virtue. Let's stop and think. Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His rights? His freedom? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The independence of his thought? These are a man's supreme possessions. To what must he sacrifice them? To whom? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot, and must not, be sacrificed. A man's self is his spirit. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all."

Ayn Rand