Self Interest Quotes - Page 12

• This is not to say that becoming a father automatically makes you a good father. Fatherhood, like marriage, is a constant struggle against your limitations and self-interests. But the urge to be a perfect father is there, because your child is a perfect gift.

  Kent Nerburn

  Marriage, Children, Father

  4 Copy quote

• You are One with everything. When you are clear about this, your definition of self-interest will change.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Self, Definitions, Interest

  Neale Donald Walsch (2002). “Communion with God”, p.109, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In addition to world conflicts, the most challenging problem we face today is hunger, deprivation and social injustice. Because we're ruled by separate self-interest, we go on accumulating personal wealth, ignoring the well being of the others.

  Satish Kumar

  Self, Challenges, Goes On

  Interview with Frank Lipman, www.drfranklipman.com. April 14, 2009.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level.

  Ayn Rand

  Lying, Men, Self

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.81, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wall Street can be a dangerous place for investors. You have no choice but to do business there, but you must always be on your guard. The standard behavior of Wall Streeters is to pursue maximization of self-interest; the orientation is usually short term. This must be acknowledged, accepted, and dealt with. If you transact business with Wall Street with these caveats in mind, you can prosper. If you depend on Wall Street to help you, investment success may remain elusive.

  Seth Klarman

  Wall, Investment Success, Self

  10 Copy quote

• In the polling booth narrow self interest wins out over lofty principles.

  James Cook

  Winning, Self, Principles

  8 Copy quote

• The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. It is regulation by reality, not by coercion.

  Harry Browne

  Reality, Self, Desire

  15 Copy quote

• Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Passion, Ambition, Pride

  14 Copy quote

• [U]nless oppressed groups stick together, and on alliances of self interest rather than do-goodism; nothing can be accomplished in the long run to dismantle the apparatus of oppression.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Running, Self, Long

  16 Copy quote

• The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Self, Groups, Morality

  9 Copy quote

• Perhaps the most powerful lesson other brands can learn from Nike is the need to act in accordance with the reality of the world we live in. In a mutually dependant, intimately connected global community facing several major crises, brands need to operate with an expanded definition of self-interest that includes the greater good.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Nike, Powerful, Reality

  6 Copy quote

• We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Running, Self, Long

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a nuclear age, and in an age of serious environmental degradation, apocalyptic belief creates a serious second order danger. The precarious logic of self-interest that saw us through the Cold War would collapse if the leaders of one nuclear state came to welcome, or ceased to fear mass death.

  Ian Mcewan

  War, Self, Order

  "The day of judgment, part two" by Ian McEwan, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.

  Joseph Lancaster

  Self, Order, Genius

  Joseph Lancaster (1803). “Improvements in education, as it respects the industrious classes of the community”, p.48

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It certainly has not been in my self-interest to defend men.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Self, Interest

  6 Copy quote

• Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he doesn't care much about the truth or about me, and his self interest, which he worships, tells him to lie, and so it comes about that given his psychology, it is a forgone conclusion that he will lie to me. I think in this case he is still blameworthy, and that implies, among other things, that he did something he ought not do.

  Nomy Arpaly

  Lying, Thinking, Psychology

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Real, Self, Names

  8 Copy quote

• Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.

  Peter Singer

  Commitment, Self, Leader

  "Putting ethics before profits" by Peter Singer, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Casting a spell, in self-defense or in self-interest is not selfish, but positive, life-affirming. You have been given powers, the very same powers that society devalues... What if it comes back tenfold? Well, don't be a fool. Never use your magick to attack the innocent. Then you have nothing to fear... Don't be frivolous or cowardly. If your course is righteous, and your tools ready, go to it.

  Zsuzsanna Budapest

  Selfish, Positive Life, What If

  11 Copy quote

• Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Father, Party, Eye

  Thomas Carlyle, A.H.R. Ball (2014). “Selections from Carlyle”, p.111, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world's problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there's no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that's the source of our descent, and it doesn't start in the boardrooms or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.

  Steve Toltz

  War, Stupid, Home

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A Fraction of the Whole”, p.89, Spiegel & Grau

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know policy is driven purely in self interest. The Federal Reserve Bank and the commercial banks and the Wall Street banks are not acting in the interests of the population at large, they're acting purely in their own self-interest, which is a shame because they're actions dictate the reality for 300 million Americans. But they don't see it that way, they see it only as a way to preserve their own self-interest.

  Max Keiser

  Wall, Reality, Acting

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this - but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are. "Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing? "We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

  Aravind Adiga

  Heart, Genuine Concern, Self

  10 Copy quote

• It turns out that one can perpetrate all manner of heinous villainy under a cloak of courtesy and good cheer. . .a man will forfeit all sensible self-interest if he finds you affable enough to share your company over a flagon of ale.

  Christopher Moore

  Cheer, Men, Self

  4 Copy quote

• That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

  Barack Obama

  Teaching, Self, Issues

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.190, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source