Rodney Frelinghuysen Quotes

People think if you look after yourself you're being selfish, you know.

Look out for Number One. If you don't, no one else will.

What the public expects and what is healthy for an individual are two very different things.

Somebody says, 'Well, I can't be concerned about other people. About the best I can do is to take care of myself' Well, then you will always be poor.

We must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering.

Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.

Selfish isn't a dirty word. It means we take care of ourselves and are able to give back.

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

All I have to do is what's right for me.

When are you going to realize that if it doesn't apply to me it doesn't matter?

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

I hate liberality - nine times out of ten it is cowardice, and the tenth time lack of principle.

I am not someone who sacrifice all for the cinema, my life will be always more important.

I have found there is no difficulty in inducing men to look after their own property.

It's time to take care of our own.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

A man's neighbors or his landlord may be much cleverer than himself, and not without an indirect interest in his prosperity, but for all that his interests will be better attended to in his own keeping than in theirs.

Before you can save the world, you have to save your seat.

…the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me, of all the philosophical theories, the most attuned to the needs of men in our time, and I see in it the most powerful safeguard men have left against themselves.

…our friend who was for protecting every other nation except his own.

Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.

The major forces in human nature: self interest and caring for others

You can't take care of charity unless you take care of yourself first.

Television does devour you because you have all sorts of responsibilities, and I really needed to renew myself. I think I owed it to myself. So I honored myself and quit. I think that's a wonderful way to put it.

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.