Barber Conable Quotes

Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters, even that of disinterestedness

vested interest

Everybody has an agenda.

The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle.

In Hollywood people lie to each other and cheat each other and then go and play tennis. But I don't want to be a tennis player.

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Everybody's out there to make a case and sometimes a little hypocrisy gets involved with that case.

I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me and yet assure myself and others that I'm sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means --- except by getting off his back.

It is out of nature that any man should think it good that his own order should be repressed, curtailed, and deprived of its power. If we go among cab-drivers or letter-carriers, among butlers or gamekeepers, among tailors or butchers, among farmers or grazers, among doctors or attorneys, we shall find in each set of men a conviction that the welfare of the community depends upon the firmness with which they, — especially they, — hold their own.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Never trust anyone without a vested interest.

Those who tell us to be in touch with our own desires are often merely trying to make us believe that what we want is the thing that they are selling. […] We're used to that kind of persuasion, for political candidates as well as commercial products.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

Men frequently do good only to give themselves opportunity of doing ill with impunity.

By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.

The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.

The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.

As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot: pride, showmanship, the pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, revenge, making money. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but I dislike closing a book with the sense that I've been had.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.