Thomas Mann Quotes

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

Having a self, even a simple self, allows you to look into the world and put a mark over what is more important and less important. It's a way of classifying the world in terms of your own needs.

It warms my heart, no doubt, to inspire people. In reality, people see in others what they want to see in themselves.

We aren't, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest.

Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown.

I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave for his actions were not the actual reasons.

I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself.

The 'self-image' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.

The only thing I find interesting is self-interest.

We are human beings. We operate from wanting to be rewarded.

But egoism is more than this. It is the realization by the individual that he is above all institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses to make them his own by accepting them.

People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.

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?

I've always known why I do what I do. I didn't need to be psychoanalysed to find that out.

Nature governs man by no principle more fixed than that which leads him to pursue his interest.

Sometimes I do everything and then there are times when I don't want to do anything at all.Most importantly, I don't do anything that I don't want to do.

We are all driven by our personal realities. Otherwise you are a saint or someone who has dedicated their lives to activism.

Nature, philosophy and social issues are the three things that always occupy my mind. You do not have any power over others but can only change yourself.

Throughout your life, you've been influenced by what you have done in the past, what you have been told you can and cannot do, and what your present circumstances seem to dictate.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature.

It is my belief that we all have the need to feel special. It is this need that can bring out the best in us, yet the worst in us.

There are points in your life, especially if you have creative ambitions, where selfishness is necessary.

I don't believe I am influencing anybody but myself.

Everything comes out of what works for me.

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is 'mine,' and it is not a general one, but is - 'unique,' as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!