Adam Grant Quotes

I feel like, especially in Hollywood, you meet people with ulterior motives, who are trying to get something from you.

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.

They regard as just whatever they believe to be advantageous.

Philanthropy can have a very strong selfish component.

Out of all the climbers of this generation, I was the one who became known to the larger public. Many of them - not all of them, but many of them - understood they had only one chance to use me for their personal gain. And it's very easy to use me.

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.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

Men tend to be selfish.

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.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

I think most people act in their self-interest.

Be incredibly, ruthlessly selfish with your equity.

The world is ruled only by consideration of advantages.

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.

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

Everybody has an agenda.

We are best pleased with reforms that are far enough away so as not to affect ourselves

Men will always be powerfully influenced in their Opinions and Actions by what appears to be their particular Interest.

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

Perhaps gaining power doesn't cause people to act like takers. It simply creates the opportunity for people who think like takers to express themselves.

The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe.

It's all about what they can get out of me.

Rare indeed, is the relationship in which the other is not cultivated for what one can get for oneself.

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.