Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The guy in the airplane goes with you. So he has self-interest to do the good things, too, and I don't know of any pilots that don't have a self-interest in staying alive.
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.
In an ideal world, Adam Smith-like, individuals would recognize what they need to do in their own self-interest, and they will make changes happen and look after themselves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.
The common class of mankind are actuated by no nobler principle than that of self-interest; this and this alone determines all adventurers in privateers: the owners, as well as those whom they employ.
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.
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.
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.
Ultimately, and I believe this is one of the fundamental problems with socialism, it's that human beings do have self-interest. It's very hard to ignore that self-interest when you're creating a government structure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.
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.
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.
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.
It seems to me that Sotheby's is very much like the British monarchy: an old and apparently very venerable institution which is in fact very nimble on its feet, an institution invested with a great deal more self-interest than the public image would suggest.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
Here's a certainty: When you play out your personal dramas, hurt and self-interest in the media, it's a confection. You say what you have to say in the way you have to say it to give it media currency - and that's always far from the truth. Often, in fact, someone else says it for you. It's all planned. It's all rehearsed.
Perhaps the most powerful lesson other brands can learn from Nike is the need to act in accordance with the reality of the world we live in. In a mutually dependant, intimately connected global community facing several major crises, brands need to operate with an expanded definition of self-interest that includes the greater good.