Self Interest Quotes - Page 4

• Why do we not exhaust the heritage of the ages, spiritual and material for our immediate pleasure, and let posterity go hang? So far as simple rationality is concerned, self-interest can advance no argument against the appetite of present possessors. Yet within some of us, a voice that is not the demand of self-interest or pure rationality says that we have no right to give ourselves enjoyment at the expense of our ancestors' memory and our descendants' prospects. We hold our present advantages only in trust.

  Russell Kirk

  Spiritual, Memories, Simple

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• We see considerable strain in Russia, and that's obviously a matter of concern to us. It's in the very strong self-interest of Russia to continue on the reform path.

  Warren Christopher

  Strong, Russia, Self

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• I hope that I state your case fairly: One of my great fears is misrepresenting you, even to myself, now that you are not here to set me right. The truth is that you did not believe in idealism. All love was suspect; even a saint's was just differed self-interest. And it was impossible to argue without sounding either sentimental or naive. Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary. And you studied early to disguise your childhood pain. But it is not universal.

  Michael Arditti

  Pain, Smart, Believe

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• To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing... When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

  Pablo Picasso

  Ideas, Drawing, Pages

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• Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Compassion, Self

  "The Impossible Question". Book by Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1972.

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• Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.

  Deborah Kass

  Self, Issues, People

  "Deborah Kass On Appropriation, Barbra Streisand, And The Dissolving Middle Class". Interview with Hallie Sekoff, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 27, 2012.

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• What is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest.

  Evan Bayh

  Party, Self, Spirit

  "The sad, hypocritical retirement of Evan Bayh" by Ezra Klein, www.washingtonpost.com. March 15, 2011.

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• Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.

  William Sloane Coffin

  Selfish, Decision, Morality

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• Most of us human beings tend to be parochial in our perceptions. What happens is that we have a very limited and narrow view of our self interest and do not adequately weight the price that has to be paid on the other side for any of these measures we are promoting.

  Alan Borovoy

  Self, Views, Perception

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• The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Self, Way

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• In practice, the goal of skepticism is not the discovery of truth, but the exposure of other people's errors. It plays a useful role in science, religion, scholarship, and common sense. But we need to remember that it is a weapon serving belief or self-interest; we need to be skeptical of skeptics. The more militant the skeptic, the stronger the belief.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Truth, Discovery, Self

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• There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.

  Robert Breault

  Integrity, Self, Battle

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• It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.

  Alexander Fraser Tytler

  Men, Self, Perfect

  " Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I" by Alexander Fraser Tytler, Petridge and Company, (p. 216), 1854.

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• Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious-but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

  James C. Collins

  Ambition, Self, Goal

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• People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.'

  Arlie Russell Hochschild

  Soup Kitchens, Self, Volunteer

  "Pay Someone to Name Your Child? How We Are Outsourcing Our Personal Affairs". Interview with Alyssa Figueroa, Don Hazen, www.alternet.org. August 13, 2012.

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• The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.

  Pablo Picasso

  Matter, Interest, Sentiments

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• While self-interest arising from the enjoyment of meat eating is obviously one reason for its entrenchment, and inertia another, a process of language usage engulfs discussions about meat by constructing the discourse in such a way that these issues need never be addressed. Language distances us from the reality of meat eating, thus reinforcing the symbolic meaning of meat eating, a symbolic meaning that is intrinsically patriarchal and male-oriented. Meat becomes a symbol for what is not seen but is always there--patriarchal control of animals and of language.

  Carol J. Adams

  Distance, Reality, Animal

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• An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

  Eamon de Valera

  Real, Independent, Islands

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• The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Self, Church

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• To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, the greatest good.

  Desmond Tutu

  Revenge, Self, Forgiving

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• If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.

  Ron Suskind

  Doors, Self, Guy

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• I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Self, Work Out

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.26, Penguin

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• Democracy actually requires that the whole public be able to see common problems and address them and step outside of their own sort of narrow self-interest to do so.

  Eli Pariser

  Self, Democracy, Addresses

  "What the Internet is hiding from you". Interview with Doug Gross, www.cnn.com. May 19, 2011.

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• Enlightened self-interest from those involved in hydrocarbons should lead to the support of technologies enabling the clean use of hydrocarbons, such as carbon capture and storage, and not to the defence of deniers and cranks.

  Nicholas Stern

  Technology, Self, Support

  "The point of no return" by Nicholas Stern, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2009.

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• By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.

  Manning Marable

  Black And White, Self, America

  Manning Marable (1995). “Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics”, p.202, Verso

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