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Quotes About Self-interest

The hierarchy of moral values in Nurturant Parent morality can be expressed as: The Nurturance Group Moral Self-Interest The Strength Group This
~ George Lakoff
The priority list is: 1. The Strength Group 2. Moral Self-Interest 3. Moral Nurturance It
~ George Lakoff
It's fashionable among progressives to wonder why so many red state voters don't vote in their own economic interests. This is simply another symptom of 18th-century rationalism, which assumes that everyone is rational and rationality means seeking self-interest. [...] People are not 18th-century reason machines. Real reason works differently. Reason matters, and we have to understand how it really works.
~ George Lakoff
In the system of conservative moral categories, government regulation falls under interference with the pursuit of self-interest by people trying to make a living, people using their self-discipline to become self-reliant (and, if possible, rich). These are the good people in our society. We want to encourage people like them and it is wrong to put roadblocks in their way. The
~ George Lakoff
What all this adds up to is the view that nature is there as a resource to be used by man for his self-interest and profit. But, frugality being a virtue, the resource should be "conserved" as much as possible.
~ George Lakoff
Alas few socialists are either benevolent enough to work hard at these occupations out of benevolence or self-interested enough to work hard at them for money.
~ John McCarthy
The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends.
~ Saki
Can anyone do much for anyone else unless by making a will in his favour and dying then and there? Should not each look after his own happiness, and will not the world be best carried on if everyone minds his own business and leaves other people to mind theirs?
~ Samuel Butler
Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self- interest.
~ Samuel Johnson
No one ever does anything out of charity," Anna went on. "Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn't helped I wouldn't sleep well, and I need my sleep.
~ Sara Donati
No one ever does anything our of charity," Anna went on. "Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn't helped I wouldn't sleep well , and I need my sleep.
~ Sara Donati
he was not the first general to welcome statistics he wanted to hear—but the numbers emerged from an intricate origami of war bureaucracy: South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, and American. The truth was bent at every fold for reasons that went beyond propaganda to self-interest, sycophancy, and wishful thinking.
~ Mark Bowden
His only cause, ultimately, was himself.
~ Mark Bowden
Choice,' rumbled a rich deep goloss. I viddied it belonged to the prison charlie. 'He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.
~ Anthony Burgess
Nincs választási lehetÅ'sége, vagy igen? Az önérdek, a testi fájdalomtól való rettegés bírta rá erre a groteszk megalázkodásra. A dolog Å'szintétlensége nyilvánvaló volt. Többé nem követ el rosszat. De nem is lesz lehetÅ'sége erkölcsi választásra.
~ Anthony Burgess
Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.
~ John Osborne
In the eternal balance between individual rights and community obligations, Washington believed that there were times that the national interest trumped individual self-interest.
~ John P. Avlon
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
~ John Perry Barlow
self-interest is not the same as selfishness.
~ John Piper
He who burns with ambition to become aedile, tribune, praetor, consul, dictator, cries out that he loves his country and he loves only himself.
~ John Ralston Saul
Pleasures are all alike simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth, they both please themselves alike, only we commend that, whereby we ourselves receive some benefit.
~ John Selden
When action is divorced from consequences, no one is happy with the ultimate outcome. If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. Soon, the pot is empty and will not be refilled -- a bad situation even for the earlier takers.
~ John Stossel
the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
~ John Stuart Mill
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as those concern the interests of no person but himself.
~ John Stuart Mill