Self-interest Quotes

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race. View quote
Gough Whitlam
Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction. View quote
Greg Bear
I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest. View quote
Boris Johnson
There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth. View quote
Chanakya
Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. View quote
Abraham Lincoln
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. View quote
Elihu Root
Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose. View quote
Vilfredo Pareto
I also know that Christianity has held back any further advances in human consciousness for the past thousand years. And for the past century it's been in direct conflict with its illegitimate offspring, Communism (again with a capital C). Both ask the individual to sacrifice his self-interest to the higher goals of the organization. (Which is okay by me as long as it's voluntary; but as soon as either becomes too big-and takes on that damned capital C-they stop asking for cooperation and start demanding it.) Any higher states of human enlightenment have been sacrificed between these two monoliths. View quote
David Gerrold
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. View quote
Lester B. Pearson
Man-every man-is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life. (Ayn Rand)
Most apparent conspiracies result from consistent local self-interest with no need for global coordination. View quote
Patri Friedman
At that time, there was general agreement among everyone involved in women's liberation that women should have a defined sexual self-interest. View quote
Susie Bright
Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted-for the constraint of a definite "thing” cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw "evolution” or "social organization,” not to mention the more mundane "digestion” or "self-interest,” without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear. View quote
Alan Greenspan
Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world. View quote
James Connolly
By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation. View quote
R. H. Tawney
To become a token woman - whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters - is to become something less than a man... since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest. View quote
Adrienne Rich
Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters, even that of disinterestedness. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest. (Charles Baudelaire)
In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea. View quote
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection. View quote
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality. He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry. View quote
Nelson Mandela