Self-interest Quotes

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.

Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.

For the state by its nature claims sovereignty, the right to an unlimited development of power, determined only by self-interest. It is by nature anarchistic.

Even wisdom has to yield to self-interest.

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.

Mitt Romney's only bottom line is the one at the end of his own bank statement. The problem is that he confuses his own narrow, self-interest - and that of people like him - with the national interest. He thinks as long as we do right by the Mitt Romneys of the world, America will be just fine.

We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans.

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

It certainly has not been in my self-interest to defend men.

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.

We hope the world will act in the spirit of enlightened self-interest.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

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

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.

Part of diplomacy is to open different definitions of self-interest.

Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

A culture in which guilt is automatically assumed to be neurotic and unhealthy has devised a remarkably clever way of protecting its self-interest.

Prejudice and passion and suspicion are more dangerous than the incitement of self-interest or the most stubborn adherence to real differences of opinion regarding rights.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

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

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.

People acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world.

Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.