Quotes & Sayings About Entitlement

I don't trust art that promises a 24-hour joyride. In fact, there seems to be a modern sense of entitlement for such constant "ups," which is a repugnant attitude any way one chooses to look at it. I definitely believe in the possibility of happiness, though; it's just something that I think, rightfully, is rare in its genuine form, and that it can't be counterfeited. — Chris Ware

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. — Mark Steyn

Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. You can never know all of the facts. Only I can. And since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to your fate, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions.
One can make either true statements or false statements about reality. All of the statements I make are true. — Scratch

The problem of society today: An absolute lifestyle of entitlement. People gauge everything by "feeling", meaning whatever they feel like doing or whatever they don't feel like doing. Passion is valued over dedication. Instant gratification is prized over true fulfillment. They don't know that more than feeling; intuition is the better key. They don't know that more than passion; fulfillment and dedication are the better keys. True passion will produce dedication and ultimately - fulfillment. If not, then it should not be called passion; it should just be called a lack of self control/ immaturity. — C. JoyBell C.

We live in a world where people are so busy trying to find someone that's "good enough" for them, that they have failed to stop and ask themselves if they are in fact good enough for other people! This is the result of a feeling of false entitlement that has been instilled in the minds of people today. "Everyone" deserves "the best" from the "Universe" however, nobody is teaching anybody to stop and try to become the best for their own selves and for other people. When everybody thinks they are the best, everybody falls short of the best that they can actually be. — C. JoyBell C.

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. — Geoffrey Wood

An attitude of entitlement is inversely related to one of gratitude. — Pete Wilson

Entitlement didn't start with my kids. It began with me. — Kristen Welch

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

It all came down to entitlement, and one's sense of it. Marina, feeling entitled, never really asked herself if she was good enough. Whereas he, Julius, asked himself repeatedly, answered always in the affirmative, and marveled at the wider world's apparent inability to see the light. he would have to show them - of this he was ever more decided, with a flamelike conviction. But he was already thirty, and the question was how? — Claire Messud

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 *have* to think about that ... — Patrick Rothfuss

Musicians, actors, writers - we're all neurotic, odd people who've lucked into accidental careers. So I just don't like being around public figures with that sense of entitlement, it just seems unhealthy, and it strips so much potential for them to develop as a human being. — Moby

If we live our lives as a gift it is possible to reach a blissful state of eternal happiness. It is those who live their life with a sense of entitlement that undermine peace , freedom and liberty. Know that every breath is a miracle and every moment a blessing and you will achieve your dreams. Planning other people's actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them. — Ludwig Von Mises

Safe Sex
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;
if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another's cry; if they employ each other
as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,
no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated
apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond's edge — Donald Hall

Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else's money? — John Stossel

Obviously the first thing we need to do is repeal "Obamacare." That's one entitlement that we can get rid of. And that's a couple trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years. — Rick Santorum

We must shift our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility. — Angeles Arrien

I've never had a sense of entitlement. I saw how hard my father worked for his money, and it was always made very clear to me that things wouldn't just be given to me. — Ivanka Trump

Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics - by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck. Is — Sam Harris

The central question is whether Medicare and Medicaid should remain entitlement programs guaranteeing a certain amount of care, as Democrats believe, or become defined contribution programs in which federal spending is capped, as Republicans suggest. — Christina Romer

When you're a trans woman, you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody, but if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you're accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement. — Julia Serano

Members of royal families are born into a world of indulgence and entitlement, and the princelings who grow up that way may never have to develop any discipline. — Nancy Gibbs

I was surrounded by too many people who felt that they had a strong sense of entitlement. That I owed them something. — Curtis Jackson

And in terms of entitlement reforms, we have to save them from themselves, because if we don't reform social security and we don't reform Medicare, they're going to actually implode. — Ben Quayle

National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government. — Richard Perle

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 ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries
we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie. So who makes the pie?
...
Something has happened where we've decided on a personal level that it's all right to abdicate our individual responsibility to the common good and let government worry about the common good while we all go about our individual self-interested business and struggle to gratify our various appetites. — David Foster Wallace

Our theory is simply this: a person counts as an asshole when, and only when, he systematically allows himself to enjoy special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people. — Aaron James

I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic. — Tim Gunn

Boys who grow up seeing themselves everywhere as powerful and central just by virtue of being boys, often white, are critically impaired in many ways. It's a rude shock to many when things don't turn out the way they were told they should. It seems reasonable to suggest media misrepresentations like these contribute, in boys, to a heightened inability to empathize with others, a greater propensity to peg ambition to intrinsic qualities instead of effort and a failure to understand why rules apply or why accountability is a thing. It should mean something to parents that the teenagers with the highest likelihood of sexually assaulting a peer and feel no responsibility for their actions are young white boys from higher-income families. The real boy crisis we should be talking about is entitlement and outdated notions of masculinity, both of which are persistently responsible for leaving boys confused and unprepared for contemporary adulthood. — Soraya Chemaly

A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college. — Amy Chua

With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care - expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed 'fiscal cliff,' the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda. — George Will

For Social Security to be financially sound, the federal government should have $100 trillion - a sum of money six-and-a-half times the size of our entire economy - in the bank and earning interest right now. But it doesn't. And while many believe that Social Security represents our greatest entitlement problem, Medicare is six times larger in terms of unfunded obligations. — John C. Goodman

Chloe narrowed her eyes. "Americans are all the same. Arrogant, self-entitled trash. You are evidently no exception." She looked away. "Huh, and here I assumed you had the corner on self-entitlement. Then again, I guess it complements that elitist attitude you've got going on. — Emily Albright

The author observes the shift now that children are not a source of labor for the family, that they have gone from employees of the parents to the bosses of the parents. — Jennifer Senior

Entitlement breeds laziness, which in turn breeds decline. But of course with enough money, it is possible not to notice for decades that your family name is gathering dust. — Matthew FitzSimmons

She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that, because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Pride and entitlement always go with unforgiveness. The longer you hold someone's offense over them, the more likely you are to start feeling arrogant and entitled to your posture toward him. — Will Davis Jr.

Your daughters will leave this school as confident, resilient young women." Ms. Byrne was off, delivering the private school party line. Resilience. What crap. No kid was going to go to school in a place that looked like freaking Buckingham Palace and come out of it resilient. She should be honest: "Your daughter will leave this school with a grand sense of entitlement that will serve her well in life; she'll find it especially useful on Sydney roads. — Liane Moriarty

When you find yourself internally, you find what nourishes you from within. You lose that entitlement and anger when YOU deliver. — Tony Curl

Everybody deserves love, but nobody is entitled to it. — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

I feel like rock stars feel a sense of entitlement, whereas I just feel a sense of good fortune. — Neil Strauss

...I believe our early experiences and beliefs about our place in the world inform who we think we are and what we deserve and by what means it should be given to us. — Cheryl Strayed

America is ensnared in self-indulgence and its future hangs in the balance. Our moral and spiritual foundations are rapidly being destroyed. Our arrogance is producing a socialist state that is becoming our god. The entitlement state of mind has created a nation that looks to the government for the answer to our problems, when the only answer is, "Our Father which art in heaven." — John Hagee

And like most of her peers, Barbara Ann has a French postal worker's sense of divine entitlement when it comes to her hours. — Rob Reid

I was so lucky because what I did in 'Thor' was I built the character from the ground up - the foundations of his spirit, really. He was someone who was born with an expectation that he would one day be a king, born with an entitlement. — Tom Hiddleston

The sight of so many agitated and serious people made Margaret smile, but she reflected that they were paid to be serious, and enjoyed being agitated. — E. M. Forster

Men have special needs too: for example, a man generally needs a higher daily intake of calories than a woman. But this has never been though of as a sign of men's inferiority to women; if anything, it is a sign of strength and an entitlement to extra food. — Jonathan Wolff

The two states - envious and grateful - have little to do with what a person actually receives. They have more to do with the character of the person. If you give something to entitled, envious people, it profits them or you nothing. They just feel that you have finally paid your debt to them. If you give to grateful people, they feel overwhelmed with how fortunate they are and how good you are. Parents need to help children work through their feelings of entitlement and envy and move to a position of gratitude. — Henry Cloud

One moment you can say the words 'I am'. And the next, you have no first person, no present tense, and no entitlement, as a subject, to act on verbs of any kind. — Lynne Truss

Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you. — Paul Ryan

I am going to give the American people a huge helping of unbridled truth: that we can't continue to spend what we are spending, that we can't avoid entitlement reform because we are afraid of third rail politics. — Rick Perry

Whatever fears, whatever sense of vulnerability may underlie such behavior, it also comes out of entitlement, the entitlement to inflict suffering and even death on other people. It breeds misery in the perpetrator and the victims. (The Longest War) — Rebecca Solnit

Male privilege is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male in most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women. — Kate Bornstein

Katz had read extensively in popular sociobiology, and his understanding of the depressive personality type and its seemingly perverse persistence in the human gene pool was that depression was successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worse had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. — Jonathan Franzen

The self was a very strange concept to me until I came to America, and my child was born with that entitlement, and that just thrilled me. — Anchee Min

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. — John Mackey

The divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of condominiums. — Steve Martin

Let's be honest about this; the liberal agenda with failed stimulus plans and government entitlement programs is crippling our economy and our quality of life. — Alveda King

Society nowadays tells people that their happiness is all that matters but happiness is never found if it costs someone else's theirs. That is not what happiness is, nor would such a person deserve it, because happiness is forged by the setting aside of self and in doing for others to make them happy first and foremost, so if you have to hurt another human being to "find your happiness," then you have no clue what the word actually means or what it's willing to do, and in being so self-centered and entitled, it's veritably tragic that the only care and concern you have is for yourself. — Donna Lynn Hope

We can believe in hierarchy. We can believe the universe was made just for us. Hierarchy and a major sense of entitlement are not insurmountable problems. The problem occurs when we treat those whom we believe lie beneath us as slaves. Religion once sustained human slavery. It was wrong then. When it blindly sanctions the slavery of every nonhuman animal, it is wrong now. — Cass R. Sunstein

If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement - the sense of contempt, the hatred - on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won't change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness? — Derrick Jensen

To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out while he himself puts them on like a sock over a foot onto the stub of himself--his extra sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye which extrudes, expands, winces and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again. Bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way; this journey into a darkness that is composed of women--a woman--who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward. — Margaret Atwood

At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right - or should I say entitlement? They raised such a big political fuss that Congress legislated nontaxable status for employer-provided medical care. — Milton Friedman

Many curmudgeons believe that a malady afflicts many of today's twenty-somethings: their sense of entitlement. It is their impression that too many of you think doing routine office tasks is beneath you, and your supervisors are insufficiently sensitive to your needs. Curmudgeons are also likely to think that you have a higher opinion of your abilities than your performance warrants. — Charles Murray

Republicans should embrace the possibility that Obamacare could pave the way toward lower health care entitlement spending overall. That won't be easy. But it's not unthinkable, either. — Joe Klein

I see kids and young adults walking the streets of L.A. with this enormous sense of entitlement, who seem to think that if they are basically good people and pay their bills, then the world will be good back to them. And I think life isn't always like that. — Evangeline Lilly

Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent
you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So, put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me
it will at least be taken into consideration. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Our sinful nature breeds envy, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and transgression. Envy, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and transgression breed isolation. Isolation breeds life problems (emotional, behavioral, rela-tional). — Henry Cloud

To lead is a privilege, not an entitlement. It doesn't make you better than anyone; it helps you bring out the best in everyone. Accolades don't inspire a leader's vision; they've set their sights on the success of others. Leaders bypass shortsightedness and focus on the big picture. Leaders who always stand righteously never stand alone. — Carlos Wallace

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. — Thomm Quackenbush

Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck - and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air condition, color television and a microwave oven - and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs. Cell phone and other electronic devices are by no means unheard of in low-income neighborhoods, where children would supposedly go hungry if there were no school lunch programs. In reality, low-income people are overweight even more often than other Americans. — Thomas Sowell

Except this "if we're meant to meet, we'll meet" attitude isn't truly relaxed. So we're not going to commend you for it. This attitude is more passive than relaxed. A passivity born of entitlement. You are owed a soul mate; this has been promised to you since birth. Everybody knows that. So why worry? — Augusten Burroughs

I am a men's liberationist (or "masculist") when men's liberation is defined as equal opportunity and equal responsibility for both sexes. I am a feminist when feminism favors equal opportunities and responsibilities for both sexes. I oppose both movements when either says our sex is THE oppressed sex, therefore, "we deserve rights." That's not gender liberation but gender entitlement. Ultimately, I am in favor of neither a women's movement nor a men's movement but a gender transition movement. — Warren Farrell

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers. — Tullian Tchividjian

In our families, we are finding that abandoning that sense of masculine entitlement actually enables us to live happier lives. — Michael S. Kimmel

The men were less interesting to look at, but nearly all had that air about them that I could sometimes detect in Will
of wealth and entitlement, a sense that life would settle itself agreeably around them. — Jojo Moyes

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above. — Ben Bernanke

People who take more than their share usually feel an inflated sense of entitlement. — Jeanne Phillips

Entitlement is a precarious place from which to create or perform - it projects the idea that you have nothing to prove, nothing to claim, nothing to show but self-satisfaction, a smug boredom. It breeds ambivalence. It's as if instead of having to prove they are something, these musicians prove they aren't anything. It's an inverted dynamic, one that sets performers up to fail, but also gives them a false sense of having already arrived. I don't understand how someone would not push, challenge, or at least be present, how anyone could get onstage and not give everything. — Carrie Brownstein

Trying to corral the suburban stampede with a bunch of school buses was like herding cats. Actually, it was worse than herding cats. It was herding white people, earth's only species with a greater sense of entitlement than a cat. — Tanner Colby

Mastery over the body - its impulses, its needs, its size - is paramount; to lose control is to risk beauty, and to risk beauty is to risk desirability, and to risk desirability is to risk entitlement to sexuality and love and self-esteem. — Caroline Knapp

With sports, there's no entitlement on the field. It's about numbers. It's about results. It's about outcomes. — Maynard Webb

Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. — James Madison

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did. — Rory Kinnear

President Obama has ignored or dismissed proposals that would address our anti-competitive tax code and unsustainable trajectory of federal debt - including his own bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - and submitted no plan for entitlement reform. — Glenn Hubbard

Gratitude works its magic by serving as an antidote to negative emotions. It's like white blood cells for the soul, protecting us from cynicism, entitlement, anger, and resignation. — Arianna Huffington

Domestic violence, mansplaining, rape culture, and sexual entitlement are among the linguistic tools that redefine the world many women encounter daily and open the way to begin to change it. — Rebecca Solnit

Entitlement is not a friend of art. Work is. Pain is. — Michael Gungor

We started with entitlement programs that generously met the needs of individuals unable to provide enough for themselves. This slowly but surely created a portion of the population that became unwilling to provide for themselves and a population that learned new tactics to get more and more government assistance. — G.S. Kyle

Jealousy is a terrible thing. I know all the psychological triggers. The fear of losing control, the fear of loss, the fear of abandonment, neglect and loneliness ... But the most destructive thing about jealousy is that it kills what it values-the love you want to save won't survive the constraints of jealousy. There is no entitlement. Love is either equal or a tragedy. — Michael Robotham

Too many people are endowed with a feeling of entitlement, but born without God-given empathy. — C. JoyBell C.

Is there no end to his diguises of benevolence? — Margaret Atwood

Rumors run wild when one sacrifices for self and temporarily forsakes those who assume entitlement to one's persona. — T.F. Hodge

There are no roads in British Columbia. There are only corners joined together. And nowhere is this truer than in Vancouver. In this city, pedestrians, even those within clearly marked crosswalks
especially those within clearly marked crosswalks
are viewed not as nuisances to be avoided but as obstacles to be overcome. Rising to the challenge, Vancouver drivers will attempt to weave through these pedestrians without knocking any over
and, here's the fun part, without ever applying the brakes. Swoosh, swoosh: downtown slalom. Pedestrians, in turn, try to keep things interesting by crisscrossing the streets at random, like neutrons in a particle accelerator. They cross the street like this because, being from Vancouver, they naturally have a sense of entitlement. Either that or they're stoned. — Will Ferguson

Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy. — Chris Chocola

Entitlement is simply the belief that you deserve something. Which is great. The hard part is, you'd better make sure you deserve it. So, how did I make sure that I deserved it?
To answer that, I would like to quote from the Twitter bio of one of my favorite people, Kevin Hart. It reads:
My name is Kevin Hart and I WORK HARD!!! That pretty much sums me up!!! Everybody Wants To Be Famous But Nobody Wants To Do The Work! — Mindy Kaling

Maybe I should have been frightened of him. This older man who saw that I was alone, who felt like I owed him something, which was the worst thing a man like that could feel. — Emma Cline

Divorce exposes absolutely ever buried assumption about marriage ... how a husband's sense of entitlement and a wife's sense of duty turned the principle of 'our money, our kids' into the reality of 'his money, her kids. — Mary Blakely

There's a whole generation growing up thinking ... the government exists to care for them. — Dave Ramsey

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don't understand why it's the government's responsibility. — Wayne Dyer