Attacking the indecency of life in much of the Southern Hemisphere is no longer a matter of grace, of charity, of patronizing kindness. It is a matter of intense self-interest.
The cost of leadership is self-interest.
There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.
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.
Secularism does not accept many things as absolutes. Its principal objectives are pleasure and self-interest. Often, those who embrace secularism have a different look about them.
The emoluments clause is in the Constitution for a reason: We, as Americans, need to know that the president acts in our best interests, not his own self-interest.
Businessmen should not put their finger in politics, because they tend to think only of their own self-interest. But I worry about the low morale in Italian industry and the lack of government initiatives to help the poor.
Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party.
In my experience, most players act the way they do in their own self-interest, in getting their emotions out and basically working with their own demons on court.
We hope the world will act in the spirit of enlightened self-interest.
Even wisdom has to yield to self-interest.
Comey made mistakes, but they weren’t made out of self-interest. To deny he wasn’t put into political positions by lawmakers on Capitol Hill or on the campaign trail would be placing blame in the wrong place.
That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.
Brave doesn’t spread hate or bully the vulnerable. Brave doesn’t put greed and self-interest over millions of lives. Brave doesn’t cower behind lies and walls. Brave doesn’t pit people against one another. That’s what fear does.
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.
Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.
As the spiritual leader of six million people, the Dalai Lama can be credited with a significant renunciation of the authority of tradition – of the conventional politics of national self-interest as well as of religion.
The values that I have are the values I was raised with, from where I’m from, which is a middle-class place. So that informs everything about me, my politics and all that stuff. I mean, politically, I vote against my own self-interest at every election. I actively ask these people to raise my taxes.
When you objectively observe the most spiritual area to which modern people devote themselves, the religions, ask yourself if the basis of modern culture, particularly in religion, is not human self-interest. It is typical of modern sermons that the preacher criticizes people for their selfishness.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
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