Norman Douglas Quotes

Once you start thinking about it in a mercenary frame of mind, then you're finished. You're a joke, because there are too many mercenaries out there already.

Ambition is the mother of hypocrisy and prefers to skulk in corners and dark places. It cannot endure the light of day. It is an unclean vice wallowing in the depths, always hidden, but with ever an eye to advancement.

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.

Strikers are egotists, selfish. We have to be.

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.

There are many selfish people who are extremely original, then they take those pure ideas and use them to raise themselves up, that is an insincere move.

Man is essentially a selfish creature. The differences in the degree with which this developed are infinite.

There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense.

I think that in today's world, by nature, we are all self-centered. And that often leads to selfishness.

Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one.

He could have made a difference. He could have brought real jobs and development to hard working communities that need and deserve those resources. Instead, William Boyland, Jr. worked to glorify one person, and that was himself.

Hollywood 'friends' are only after one thing. They're looking out for the next big thing, and they don't want to miss out on you just in case.

We're not all nice, and there are a lot of levels of ambition and niceness.

I think most people act in their self-interest.

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

I feel like a lot of people would quite easily stab you in the back once they get what they want. And you see that in people.

To plunder, to lie, to show your ass, are the three essentials for climbing high.

If you do not know how to lie, cheat and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.

A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.

Short-sighted is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as the master motive of human action.

Resist the temptation to exploit power for personal or group interests.

Greed, greed, greed. That’s the fundamental problem of mankind. If we can solve that problem, the rest of man’s problems would follow. The only thing that can undermine our free society is greed.

Everybody has an agenda.

We corrupt the word of truth, and mix ... our doctrine with what is common and cheap... in order to turn the adulteration to our profit, and accommodate ourselves to those who meet us, and curry favor with everyone, becoming ventriloquists and chatterers, who serve their own pleasures by words uttered from the earth, and sinking into the earth, and, to gain the special good will of the multitude

Beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power.