Quotes About Self-interest

I now believe in God for my own ends. I'm not an altruistic Christian - I'm only doing it in case there is in fact a Heaven.

Part of diplomacy is to open different definitions of self-interest.

I only really watch my own films, I don't watch any other films and I don't particularly like any other actors.

Everybody's always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that's when it become corruption.

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.

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.

So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own.

Linguists don't use it?" I knew some that did. "We don't." And the others are hacks. "Thing about game theory is, it assumes rational self-interest among the players. And people just aren't rational.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

conditions that make us feel anonymous, when we think that others do not know us or care to, can foster antisocial, self-interested behaviors. My

Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of 'ideal' poems that one feels ought to be written, but don't because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A 'real' poem is a pleasure to write.

pursuing its own interests rather than the interests of the government as a whole.

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party.

The values that I have are the values I was raised with, from where I'm from, which is a middle-class place. So that informs everything about me, my politics and all that stuff. I mean, politically, I vote against my own self-interest at every election. I actively ask these people to raise my taxes.

I think most people act in their self-interest.

I am a very selfish person.

People are selfish, man. They want what they want; they don't care what you want.

Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.

Oh, I think I've been entirely selfish with my career. I've done what I wanted to do, and not put myself out for anyone else particularly.

You can't be faulted for being selfish if you're going to get better because of it.

Like everybody else, I am naturally selfish, and so I'm going to think about myself.

There are times where you have to be selfish.

Selfishness is a quality and not necessarily a bad thing.