Quotes About Self-interest

I am not going to make any commitments to the teachers union to do anything until they do something that's other than in their own self- interest. And everything they have done so far is in their self-interests, and that's it.

Rule #1 always look out for yourself first don't nobody love/care for you like you do.

If Congress does its job in this regard, the residents of Puerto Rico will be empowered to act in their own self-interest and express their future political status aspirations accordingly.

The guy in the airplane goes with you. So he has self-interest to do the good things, too, and I don't know of any pilots that don't have a self-interest in staying alive.

society degenerates into a condition of low-intensity civil war, with each pressure group anxious to secure legislation aimed at enriching itself at the expense of the rest of society.

A hypocrite is in himself both the archer and the mark, in all actions shooting at his own praise or profit.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

As a rule, for any society that is single-mindedly interested in its own promotion and thus survival, it would have to have a huge population and it would have to send its people out, not letting too many others in.

Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay.

That's the number-one rule in life: Always do what makes you feel better at all times." "That's three number-one rules now." "Rule Number One is that Rule Number One is whatever you want it to be at any time based on self-interest, blinding rationalization and petulance. At least that's the code everyone in this country seems to be operating under.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.

And Americans always think international laws are for other people anyway

You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn't a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act." Suddenly Planter jumped

People are interested in other people. But your unconscious is not. Or only as they might directly affect you. It's been hired to do a very specific job. It never sleeps. It's more faithful than God.

I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.

the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.

people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.

his very benevolence is selfish;

Skinnerian conditioning, crossed with social pressure, is now an ever-present invisibly hand that tries to manipulate all of your actions on the internet. This is the hand that is making you act against your own self-interest. Once you recognize it, you see it everywhere, hovering over you, trying to make you click your mouse or press buttons on your smartphone, giving up your valuable time, money, or information in return for little or nothing at all.

Skinnerian conditioning, crossed with social pressure, is now an ever-present invisible hand that tries to manipulate all of your actions on the internet. This is the hand that is making you act against your own self-interest. Once you recognize it, you see it everywhere, hovering over you, trying to make you click your mouse or press buttons on your smartphone, giving up your valuable time, money, or information in return for little or nothing at all.

Some were Levellers, an egalitarian movement that flowered briefly in the late 1640s. Strikingly modern in their aims, the Levellers wanted religious tolerance, manhood suffrage (the vote for all men), regular and accountable parliaments, and popular sovereignty, whereby those in power placed the public good ahead of their self-interest. Charles's example of kingship, insisting on privileges, assumptions and abuses rooted in the Middle Ages, was a lightning rod for their hatred.

Many felt a profound malaise at the idea that the sources of benevolence should be just enlightened self-interest, or simply feelings of sympathy. This seemed to neglect altogether the human power of self-transcendence, the capacity to go beyond self-related desire altogether and follow a higher aspiration. This

Self-interest is the only constant in life, and murder is always preferred to impotence. —Childermass