David Mamet Quotes

I don't think it's good to interact with people with a certain agenda in mind.

People only speak to get something.

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.

These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are ... something else entirely.

Kindness is weak when you use it in a self-serving manner. Self-serving kindness is thin - people can see right through it when a kind leader has an agenda.

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

The majority of people call or message me because they need something or they want something. You never know what people's intentions are.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

class interests in disguise.

Let me tell you, there's very few places where I don't have an agenda.

Question the motives of those who make requests of you. Discover what they really want. You may not want to give it.

Gratitude, in most men, is only a strong and secret hope of greater favors.

We spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives.

What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

The best way to get on in the world is to make people believe it's to their advantage to help you.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Of course I want to be good, but that may not be to your advantage.

The person giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him with a disinterested eagerness... and he is usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.

People do things with terrible motivations and those motivations are selfish and self-interested and financially driven.

People will love you and support you when it's beneficial.

I don't say I'm not magnetic to try and sound self-deprecating. I'm just not. Though I actually love people. I would like to meet more people. I know no one.