Self Interest Quotes - Page 4

• A culture in which guilt is automatically assumed to be neurotic and unhealthy has devised a remarkably clever way of protecting its self-interest.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Clever, Self, Guilt

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• People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.'

  Arlie Russell Hochschild

  Soup Kitchens, Self, Volunteer

  "Pay Someone to Name Your Child? How We Are Outsourcing Our Personal Affairs". Interview with Alyssa Figueroa, Don Hazen, www.alternet.org. August 13, 2012.

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• An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

  Eamon de Valera

  Real, Independent, Islands

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• Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.

  Deborah Kass

  Self, Issues, People

  "Deborah Kass On Appropriation, Barbra Streisand, And The Dissolving Middle Class". Interview with Hallie Sekoff, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 27, 2012.

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• Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.

  Julian Baggini

  Art, Self, Needs

  "Don't complain less - do it better" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2010.

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• Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.

  William Sloane Coffin

  Selfish, Decision, Morality

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• Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it

  Camille Paglia

  Cat, Animal, Self

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae”, p.89, Yale University Press

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• Redtail was a brave warrior. His loyalty to ThunderClan could never be doubted. I always relied on his judgment, for it bore witness to the needs of the Clan, and was never swayed by self-interest or pride. He would have made a fine leader.

  Erin Hunter

  Loyalty, Warrior, Pride

  Erin Hunter (2015). “Warriors 6-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Enter the Clans: Books 1-6 Plus Enter the Clans”, p.29, HarperCollins

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• She had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed though a long servitude, though its own self-hatred, though mockery, though great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

  Thornton Wilder

  Loyalty, Dog, Children

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• By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.

  Manning Marable

  Black And White, Self, America

  Manning Marable (1995). “Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics”, p.202, Verso

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• The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.

  Georges Bataille

  Warrior, Self, Interest

  Georges Bataille (1989). “Theory of religion”

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• Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people

  Jonathan Franzen

  Country, Using People, Heart

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.548, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.

  Russell Brand

  Self, Ideas, People

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• In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.

  Orson Scott Card

  Intelligent, Self, People

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Ender's Game”, p.89, Macmillan

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• A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.

  Barbara Jordan

  Peace, Equality, Destiny

  Barbara Jordan (1999). “Barbara C. Jordan--selected Speeches”

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• Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Sad, Order, Interesting

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• To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.

  Pedro Arrupe

  Self, Games, Play

  "Justice with Faith Today".

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• Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Compassion, Self

  "The Impossible Question". Book by Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1972.

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• Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing head-on the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming.

  John McCain

  Self, Environmental, Serious

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• A commercial civilization is money-oriented, profit-oriented. Commercial values always tend to wrench a society free of tradition.Economics from education to public service is being reorganized on the self-destructive basis of self-interest.

  John Ralston Saul

  Self, Civilization, Tradition

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• I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Religious, Men, Self

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2004). “Tocqueville: Democracy in America”, p.615, Library of America

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• The reason for forgiving your enemies is not for their benefit but for your own benefit. Holding grudges against other people doesn’t hurt them; doesn’t even bother them much - in fact, even pleases them if they are still mad at you. It is not in your enlightened self-interest to hold grudges, regardless of whether it bothers the person you hate or not.

  Brad Blanton

  Hurt, Hate, Self

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• Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.

  Harrison Ford

  Self, Political, Atrocities

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• What is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest.

  Evan Bayh

  Party, Self, Spirit

  "The sad, hypocritical retirement of Evan Bayh" by Ezra Klein, www.washingtonpost.com. March 15, 2011.

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• Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers "In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Self, Competition, Hierarchy

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