When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

The originator of this thought is John Ruskin.

Not only do I agree with this sentiment, I find that it is true for way too many people.  When a person is self centered, what I believe this means is that the person only sees everything in the world in relation to themselves.  Rather than thinking about the points of view of others, or the effects of anything on other people, the self centered person only looks at and considers how their own point of view and the effects of events on themselves.  When people is in this mode, they indeed are a "small package" because their universe doesn't extend past the end of their own noses. 

The problem with that is that people who are totally wrapped up in themselves inevitably do harm to others.  They might not even mean to be a negative influence on anything, but because they don't think of anything else, they don't even realize that they have been hurtful or bothersome to other people.  A few days ago we wrote about the love of money (and/or power) is the root of all evil.  Well, if you want to really boil it down to one thing, I think self-centeredness is at the root of all evil because if everyone cared about everyone else, then we would all be doing our best to be good to other people.