Self Serving Quotes - Page 3

• Why else is politics the perfect refuge for every liar, cheat, and self-serving toad that was ever born? All you need is a good set of teeth and the ability to smile convincingly with them. --Cressida

  Stuart Hill

  Liars, Self, Perfect

  Stuart Hill (2011). “The Icemark Chronicles #3: Last Battle of the Icemark”, p.215, Scholastic Inc.

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• John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.

  Matt Taibbi

  Men, Blue, Self

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• There's nothing self-serving about what motivated me to bring 'Schindler's List' to the screen.

  Steven Spielberg

  Self, Lists, Motivated

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• I do think - as self-serving as it sounds - that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.

  Howard Schultz

  Strong, Thinking, Self

  "Starbucks legend delivers recovery by thinking smaller". Interview with David Teather, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2010.

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• In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives

  Parker J. Palmer

  Self, Views, Choices

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• By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

  Queen Rania of Jordan

  Self, Goal, Lines

  "The Hard-Line on Grocery Items" by Queen Rania al Abdullah, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 7, 2010.

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• The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.

  Aldrich Ames

  Self, People, Routine

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• As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith.

  Mark Hatfield

  Christian, Religious, Self

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• The NRA disgraced itself this morning with a self-serving press event in which they demonized the media and the entertainment industry for gun violence in America, and advocated a national data base for all mentally ill persons. They apparently want armed guards in all American schools, and it seems, armed volunteers as well. Shocking.

  Anne Rice

  Morning, School, Gun

  FaceBook post by Anne Rice from Dec 21, 2012

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• Unsolicited advice is always self-serving.

  Amy Dickinson

  Women, Self, Advice

  Interview with Patrick B. Anderson, lacrossetribune.com. March 30, 2012.

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• The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.

  J. G. Ballard

  Self, Regimes, Paranoid

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

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• Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.

  Paul Bettany

  Self, Bully, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• What we get in punk these days is the "anti-anti": Someone comes up with something, then the next generation is against that, and then the next generation is against that, and then that thing becomes a problem. There's these layers of anti-, and so many of them are just so self-serving. It's not about larger freedom.

  Geoff Rickly

  Self, Next, Generations

  "United Nations". Interview with Ian Cohen, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2014.

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• The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Self, Forever, Republic

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

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• Our understanding of what constitutes intelligence is utterly relative. If an aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, for example, all of Western civilization would probably flunk. We have a very convenient and self-serving way of defining intelligence. If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

  John Robbins

  Animal, Self, Civilization

  John Robbins (2011). “Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth”, p.38, H J Kramer

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• Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Lying, Men, Self

  Robert A. Heinlein (1953). “Assignment in Eternity”

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• The United Nations has come under the control of outlaw nations and self-serving special interest groups.

  Ginny Brown-Waite

  Self, Special, Groups

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• As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and are self-serving.

  John Stossel

  Taken, Ignorance, Government

  "Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet". abcnews.go.com. November 14, 2007.

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• Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, Self, Civilization

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• New Labour was the most short-sighted, self-serving, incompetent, useless, and ineffective government that Britain has ever known.

  Liam Fox

  Mistake, Government, Self

  "Conservative party conference - live" by Andrew Sparrow, www.theguardian.com. October 6, 2010.

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• I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.

  Steven Moffat

  Writing, Self, Laughing

  "The new Doctor Who: Steven Moffat and Matt Smith". Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. April 16, 2010.

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• The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.

  Harlan Ellison

  Horse, Pain, Real

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• For me right now I think being the world number one is a bigger deal than being the world champion because I think it shows better who plays the best chess. That sounds self-serving but I think it's also right.

  Magnus Carlsen

  Thinking, Self, Play

  "The Top Chess Player In The World Impressed The Heck Out Of Everyone At This NYC Exhibition". Interview with Gus Lubin, www.businessinsider.com. September 4, 2012.

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• But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.

  Banksy

  Artist, Self, Views

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• The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Powerful, Government, Self

  Keynote Address to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 28 February 2009, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.

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