Quotes About Self-interest

So if meditation did liberate you from obedience to these feelings, it would be, in a certain sense, dispelling an illusion—the illusion you implicitly subscribe to when you follow the feeling, the illusion that the rage, and for that matter the revenge it inspires, is fundamentally "good." It turns out the feeling isn't even good in the basic sense of self-interest.

Success is cool. But significance is rad. Generosity—not scarcity—is the trait of all of the great men and women who have upgraded our world. And we need leaders, pure leaders and not narcissists obsessed with their own self-interests, as never before.

Smith emphasized that trust, responsibility and accountability exist only in a society that respects them, and only where the spontaneous fruit of human sympathy is allowed to ripen. It is where sympathy, duty and virtue achieve their proper place that self-interest leads, by an invisible hand, to a result that benefits everyone.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that self-interest can solve this problem. Given a free economy and an impartial rule of law, self-interest leads towards an optimal distribution of resources. Smith

Beneath every society where self-interest pays off, lies a foundation of self-sacrifice.

Smith did not regard economic freedom as the sum of politics, nor did he believe that self-interest is the only, or even the most important, motive governing our economic behaviour. A market can deliver a rational allocation of goods and services only where there is trust between its participants, and trust exists only where people take responsibility for their actions and make themselves accountable to those with whom they deal. In other words, economic order depends on moral order.

Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called "factions" and associated with parochial self-interest.

The prophet Jeremiah said that 'from the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain,'18 and the prophet Isaiah said, 'all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.'19 Our good deeds are stained with self-interest and our demands for justice are mixed with lust for vengeance. Ironically, it's the best people who most readily recognize and admit their own shortcomings and sin.

Egoists hold that a man's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare (egoists do not necessarily agree on the nature of man's welfare).

If capitalism is to work in the long run, it must make investments that are not in any particular individual's immediate self-interest but are in the human community's long-run self-interest (p. 308).

It's done by everyone minding their own business

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

It's not whether you win or lose - but whether I win or lose.

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.

Ordinary men, we have seen, are not much interested in any political problems which do not immediately affect themselves.

The divine eternal fullness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting.

To sum up, that mortification is the best which results in the elimination of self-will, self-interest, self-centred thinking, wishing and imagining. Extreme physical austerities are not likely to achieve this kind of mortification. But the acceptance of what happens to us (apart, of course, from our own sins) in the course of daily living is likely to produce this result.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought. Precious

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

Some people are just like that, Abigail. If it's good for them, then it's good. If it's bad for them, then it's bad. They rearrange morality to suit their ambitions. Nat simply

Politics, noun: [Poly 'many' + tics 'blood-sucking parasites']" ?—Larry Hardiman

Politicians take money from the citizenry, funnel much of it to themselves and their friends, and then use the rest of it to buy votes and to grow their power—which involves bigger and bigger government. Once a bureau is created it is never destroyed—like a malignant cancer. And government never invents the next great computer. Never produces. Only consumes." Alyssa

POLITICS (noun): Poly, meaning "many" plus Tics, meaning "blood-sucking parasites." —Larry Hardiman

Economic theory would tell you that a rational person would take the thirty dollars every time. Forget the other party, the decision was simple. You get thirty dollars or you get nothing. With this logic you would take any positive amount.