Quotes About Interests

Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.

We do not have to make self-sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.

Many philosophers and other writers have proposed the principle of equal consideration of interests, in some form or other, as a basic moral principle; but not many of them have recognized that this principle applies to members of other species as well as to our own.

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way.

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a being has interests—at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.

So the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient if not strictly accurate shorthand for the capacity to suffer and/or experience enjoyment) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?

Most human beings are speciesists. The following chapters show that ordinary human beings—not a few exceptionally cruel or heartless humans, but the overwhelming majority of humans—take an active part in, acquiesce in, and allow their taxes to pay for practices that require the sacrifice of the most important interests of members of other species in order to promote the most trivial interests of our own species.

But the basic element—the taking into account of the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be—must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman.

As far as the political, military, and economic interests of the world's powers go, (Rwanda) might as well be Mars. In fact, Mars is probably of greater strategic concern. But Rwanda, unlike Mars, is populated by human beings, and when Rwanda had a genocide, the world's powers left Rwanda to it.

Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

Neither political nor monetary sovereignty can be shared with private interests.

In every American generation, small minorities with strong material interests have often succeeded in stopping urgent reforms, against the will of the majority.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.[13]

Must interests be interesting? That is, must they be interesting to someone other than yourself?

La convergencia de intereses durante toda la vida de dos personas que no comparten los genes es tal vez la hazaña más sobresaliente de la historia evolutiva humana.

When all politicians are agreed, someone is getting bought off, for how can the interests of their various constituencies be identical? Only if that identity is the love of money and power.

The second key event was the rise, in the first third of the seventh century ce, of Islam. Similar to the case of Constantine, the fledgling Islamic movement both married religious and political interests

America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese.

Relatively cautious policies adopted during the George H. W. Bush administration were amplified and extended during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama until they threatened to damage long-term American interests.

His mind was a small thing with big holes through which passions regularly seeped out, and The Faith of Jamaicans was soon replaced in the inverse sieve of his consciousness by other interests: The Excitability of the Military Hindoo; The Impracticalities of the English Virgin; The Effect of Extreme Heat on the Sexual Proclivities of the Trinidadian.

My parents were bookish, very musical, but otherwise uninvolved in the arts or the academic world.

I make most of my friends through my extracurricular activities.

I was always interested in dancing and doing extracurricular activities.

Don't ally your personal interests with the development of the company.