Anthony de Mello Quotes

Approaching people looking for something in return isn't a relationship, it's a transaction.

Takers are self-serving in their interactions. It's all about what can you do for me.

I don't work with anyone out of a sense of charity. I use people as long as they are useful to me.

Instead of respecting things, we want to use them for ourselves and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them.

I felt like they only cared about what I could do for them, not what they could do for me.

The egoist is fooled by no ideals: he discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest.

There is nothing wrong in using people. The success never uses people except to their advantage.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

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.

If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good.

Promise everything to anyone, unless clear obligation prevents it. Only live up to those promises which are of advantage to you.

There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind.

If you cash in on people, then they aren't your friends.

You should never bury someone to forward your own personal interest. And I would never do that to anyone else on the planet.

If you want to find out if someone's a taker, it's not actually that useful to know what they've accomplished. What you want to want to know is how they explain them.

Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved? -Lena Kaligaris

The trouble is, most people are not so generous. Everybody wants love for themselves. I hear this all the time from the women I work with. I hear them say, "I want, I want." I never hear them saying what they want to give.

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for- its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.

In Charn [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.

Selfish men make the best lovers. They're prepared to invest in the women's pleasures so that they can collect an even bigger dividend for themselves.

The man who while he gives thinks of what he will get in return, deserves to be deceived.

He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others.

When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one can’t insist on love or demand affection. you’re finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.