Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

The Right-wingers everywhere take themselves too seriously, whether in the U.S. or the U.K. And, by the way, so does the Left. The Left can take itself a little too seriously as well.

Selling out is doing something you don't really want to do for money. That's what selling out is.

I enjoyed the Hee Haw people, but from 1980 on I didn't enjoy it and thought about leavin', and thought, hell, it's an easy job and pays wonderful. I kinda just prostituted myself for their money.

Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.

Power focuses on self-preservation; principle focuses on making ideas successful.

Conservatives are unashamed by self-interest and feel comfortable exercising power on their own behalf.

One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity.

Everyone makes moral choices that better themselves and hurt someone else along the way - and whether or not the means justify the ends. And that, to me, is universal.

While we use American power to fight hard for democracy against extremism on both left and right, our critics seem suspicious of any assertion of United States power or influence against any government or group that claims to be on the left.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

It worries me about what happens if people in government are looking for that next job: 'Yeah I'm working now, not as much money as I could be making, but when I leave here, that's where I'm headed.' That ultimately infects whatever it is that they're doing.

Many of these [big political] donors are my friends. Those people are not like charities ... They Want. These are total tough cookies. When they give millions and millions of dollars, they're not doing it for the good of the American Cancer Society. They're doing it for themselves.

We must take, and continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.

I will never be so merely to obtain the reputation of a cunning politician, a character I neither admire nor esteem.

I do not believe that our place is at the comfortable mid-point between the extremes of left and right.

I have never regarded politics as an arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.

Left-wing confusion spawns right-wing reaction.

We [communists] took the noblest dreams and hopes of mankind as our credo; the evil that we did was to accept the degradation of our own souls.

Politicians need three things to be successful: money, unchecked ego, and sociopathic drive.

I can not enter the ring on the money basis. First, because, in the main, it is wrong and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money.

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

You consult your honor; I my interest.

In the struggle for power, propaganda is an instrument to be used by those who want to secure or retain power just as much as it is by those wanting to displace them.

Ethics and Washington DC. Are they mutually exclusive?