Quotes About Self-interest

Known he couldn't hurt her and she couldn't hurt him. Because neither of them gave a damn about anyone or anything except their own skins.

Every man for himself.

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 virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.

ANYONE WHO HAS PREJUDICES and whose perceptions are colored by self-interest will never see the truth in any area in which his bias operates. Only when his bias is removed will he be able to understand the truth. —RABBI ELIYAHU DESSLER (1892–1953)

I think that people's nature is always to want a better life. So from that, we should not expect human beings to behave for benefit of the rest of nature-of the environment. You can only expect people to help the environment out of their own interest" Proffessor Zheng Zhe

The new world economic order is not an exercise in philanthropy, but in enlightened self-interest for everyone concerned.

There is some pretty powerful self-interest in wanting a future that is not just running storm-to-storm. The argument that I make is not that we aren't competitive and selfish and greedy. We are. We're all of these things. We're complicated, competitive, greedy and nasty, and kind and generous and compassionate.

Even if a sense of honor and duty were not the primary motivating factors in the Warren Commission's work, simple self-interest would naturally have induced its members not to try to cover up the existence of a conspiracy if, in fact, they found one.

it is not because of the benevolence of the baker that we eat fresh bread every morning but because of his desire to make money.

All human activity suddenly seemed to me composed of such sport: We each chose the game we thought would yield the most for us and our own. We gambled, gambled selfishly, gambled more than we could afford, the odds staggeringly stacked in somebody else's favor.

If they sided with the king, they did so from defiant self-interest, not humble submission. Perhaps Jury Wheeler expressed the mood best when he pronounced that if he were forced to carry arms in the rebel army, his first target would be his captain.

Whether tenant farmers seeking their own land or cultural minorities fearful of persecution, many groups of Americans, upon surveying the political landscape of the Revolution, sided with the British for reasons that had little or nothing to do with political philosophy. Articulate and vociferous Tories might preach on the moral virtues of loyalty and the corresponding evils of revolution, but many rank-and-file loyalists operated from concrete principles of survival and self-interest.

Rational self-interest is always what morality boils down to.

The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I.

Nobody really cares about what other people think anymore; they're all about themselves.

The NFL cares about one thing, and that's the NFL. That's the bottom line.

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

At large in disaster are two populations: a great majority that tends toward altruism and mutual aid and a minority whose callousness and self-interest often become a second disaster.

Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.

megachurch televangelists with their mansions and Lear jets, preaching a 'Jesus wants you to be rich' gospel of self-interest

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion.

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favourite perversion?

I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others … People like me want to … satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me.

The implications for politics were immense. If instead of ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest to the detriment of others, a ruler would curb his ego and submit to li for a single day, Confucius believed, everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness!