Quotes About Self-interest

Donald Trump's America can be friend and ally, or at least an indifferent power that concentrates on itself and minds its own business.

Proper business planning demands that you focus on the self-interest of the customer at all times.

In the business world, everyone is always working at legitimate cross purposes, governed by self interest.

Narcissists only play for their own business, whereas Distortionists play with other's business only to gain personal advantage. If you are both, then you aren't an entrepreneur.

Since reasoning alone proved incapable of fully resolving the clash between self-interest and ethics, it is unlikely that rational argument will persuade every rational person to act ethically.

The plant-man said, 'I've observed that when a human is dealing with another, he's usually logical only if he's advancing his self-interests or has a desire to hurt or put down the other. Is this one of those situations?

Love reconnects us to life. The truth of Christ's life is that life is love and love is life. There is no genuine life without love. Self-interest suffocates life. Life implodes when self-interest is at the core. This is why the kingdom of self is based on death. Ultimately, taking care of Number One takes care of no one. For the only way to truly care for myself is to give myself in love of others. There I will find my truest and deepest fulfillment.

I am the furthest thing from a do-gooder. I am venal and flib and too clever by half, I know, but the thrill of the most brilliantly quicksilver aperÒ«u is no match for the self-interested high I get from having done someone a good turn. You'd think I'd do more good turns as a result, but there you go.

Human memory, driven by emotional self-interest, goes to extraordinary lengths to provide evidence to back up whatever understanding of the world we have our hearts set on—however removed that may be from reality.

Well, Mr Thomas, while I'm in favour of education, I couldn't in good conscience recommend a university career in anything but the hard sciences. As a working environment, the rest of academia is a sewer of irrationality, hate mongering, envy, and self-interest. I'm getting out the moment I earn my twenty-five-year pension package, and then I'm going to write novels...

There's nothing wrong with advocating for your own company.

For the good of the American people, we must place our own interests first.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Rousseau asserts, improves him, makes him better; but self-interest also develops his evil tendencies. Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being — as I have pointed out in the Country Doctor (le Medecin de Campagne) — a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order.

Paris is a queer place," said Lucien; it seemed to him that he saw self-interest squatting in every corner.

No god save self, that is the way to live ...

We blunt our own conscience, darken our own judgment by self-interest, and rebuke in others the very vices for which we are famous. Each of us carries around a "deep and calm source of delusion, which undermines the whole principle of good."173

By focusing exclusively on the events of the day, journalism all but severs the connection between time and eternity. It makes the world appear to be nothing but an endless jumble of events through which it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern anything beyond the relatively base motivations of lust, calculated self-interest, and the will to power. In short, journalism is not able to communicate wisdom.

He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.

I'm neither your friend nor your frenemy, unless you have what I want.

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage.

In my own lifetime I've seen the apotheosis of greed as a virtue, and brutal insensitivity become enlightened self interest. We may do as well as all but a few countries but that scarcely makes us a Christian nation except to those who bathe in patriotic gore out of habit and stupidity. Neither the emperor and consorts nor the citizenry is wearing the sacramental clothing it chooses to think it is wearing. A simple, private reading of the Gospels would tell them so.

When power becomes the goal over service, self-interest over public interest, conflicts of interest over the common good, winning and losing over mutuality and compromise, and personal narcissism over shared benefit, we are headed for deep trouble. Autocratic behavior becomes more acceptable and even admired by people who are already subject to anxiety and anger. And before long, the road to authoritarian rule is a threat to freedom.

We're gods, not saints. Everyone lies. Everyone cheats. Everyone scores off everyone else.

Working hard for yourself & being selfish are different situations.