Quotes About Self-interest

Accept dear God the soul of Dixon Hartnell, who made his own amends and who travelled his own way. He failed as we all fail, and perhaps more often than some. Yet he recognized fundamental things. Not that we are evil; for we are not. But that, by whatever name--self interest, impulse, anger, lust, or greed--we are inclined that way; and that it is our tragedy to know this can never change, our duty to try at every moment to overcome it; and our glory occasionally to succeed.

Men who live like Casanova are seldom interested in themselves; their egocentricity does not give them time for egotism.

Love yourself, if that means rational, healthy, and moral self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget that there is a first and even greater commandment, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind. This is the height of life. And when you do this you live the complete life.

Illusion, then, is the simultaneous presence and interaction in the mind of two universes, one real, one imaginary. It transports the spectator from the trivial present to a plane remote from self-interest and makes him forget his own preoccupations and anxieties; in other words, it facilitates the unfolding of his participatory emotions, and inhibits or neutralizes his self-asserting tendencies.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

these people would indeed only be concerned for themselves, for their egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are distinguished only by the absurdity of their means.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.

We are on strike against martyrdom—and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others.

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, Who is destroying the world? You are.

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO

An Individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices himself to others nor sacrifices others to himself; he deals with men as a trader - not as a looter; as a producer - not as a Attila.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.

I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

The basic cause of totalitarianism is two ideas: men's rejection of reason in favor of faith, and of self-interest in favor of self-sacrifice. If

The sacred word: EGO

I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money

It's a law of survival, isn't it?—to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine.

Those who start by saying: 'It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others'—end up by saying: 'It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.