Top 70 Self-Interest Quotes

My commitment to the security and future of Israel is based upon basic morality as well as enlightened self-interest. Our role in supporting Israel honors our own heritage.

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.

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.

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

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.

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.

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.

I think that, too many times, business has been seen as acting in its narrow self-interest rather than, essentially, contributing more broadly to society. I think a lot of that is unintentional; I don’t think that many managers are deliberately trying to be unethical or are not trying to be sensitive to social needs.

The beauty and riddle in studying the motives of any politician is in trying to decide what is idealism and what is self-interest, and often we are left to conclude that the answer is a mixture of the two.

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.

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.

Everybody’s always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that’s when it become corruption.

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

Bearing in mind most companies rely on the middle classes in developed countries to sell goods and services throughout the value chain, dealing with inequality is a matter of brutal enlightened self-interest. It’s simple economics: Global stability equals global growth equals profits.

The American middle class used to be envy of the world. It was a byproduct of economic freedom. We had a very dynamic free-market economy and limited government. People were out there pursuing their own self-interest and creating employment opportunities.

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

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.

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.

We must draw on our early roots and remind people why the Labour party was created and who it sought to represent. We have never been a sectional party promoting self-interest, but instead a force for engaging self-reliance and self-determination.

It’s overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure, democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel.

The only thing I find interesting is self-interest.

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.

I actually think that self-interest is overrated as an all-purpose guide to political motive. It leaves out something at least as powerful and immovable – individual psychology.

Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it’s not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways.

Over the course of history, governments, political regimes, and leaders have done some stupid things despite all arguments to the contrary, at times even against their own self-interest.

Nature… is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.

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

Washington is deeply frustrating because so many of the positions that politicians hold are a product of ephemeral self-interest. They reverse themselves, for themselves, all the time.

A society that is all self-interest and no comradeship is not a society at all. But a society that is all comradeship and no self-interest is also not a society; it is a sect – or, on the largest scale, totalitarianism.

My real dream is that everybody will see their self-interest tied up with someone else, whether or not they see them, and see that as an opportunity for growing closer together as a culture and as a world.

While claiming advocacy, what hoaxers really exhibit is self-interest. Often, this is because there is only the self to support their false claims; any revelations merely provide further opportunities for details and forgery.

An approach that phases in congressional term limits reconciles the self-interest of members of Congress with the public’s desire to see these changes enacted and gives us the best chance to make term limits a reality.

Democracy is based upon empathy and the recognition that some decisions are solely for the community’s benefit without regard to one’s own narrow self-interest.

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

We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest.

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.

You remember France, it’s the country that financed the American Revolution… OK, it was in their self-interest, but still, they made it happen. Let’s face it: without the French, there would be no America… in other words, without them, there is no us.

Very few things in life are more fulfilling than being part of a team and knowing you’re a part of something bigger than your own self-interest.

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.

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

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.

Defender of the liberty that I idolize, myself more free than anyone, in coming as a friend to offer my services to this intriguing republic, I bring to it only my frankness and my good will; no ambition, no self-interest; in working for my glory, I work for their happiness.

I’m not unhappy with the idea of appealing to people’s self-interest if that’s what makes them understand something about the non-human world.

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.

Putting the need of your team above personal self-interest is a difficult thing to do.

Children like their mothers especially to be standing still and watching them, even if they are sleeping. At least that’s how I felt. There’s nothing wrong with the self-interest of children; it’s just the way they are.

When we forgive someone, it doesn’t excuse their actions; it frees us from our own chronic stress and suffering, so it’s in our own self-interest.

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

I am always someone who follows the research more than my self-interest. It certainly has not been in my self-interest to defend men. I’ve gone from being quite wealthy, when I was defending women, to being quite poor defending men.