Alexander Hamilton Quotes

The desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct; ... the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty.

Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest.

However, there's three reasons for doing things in this particular world. One is love, one is prestige and the other's money. If you get all three together, that's fine.

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

Satan doesn't mind you using your strengths, so long as you do it for personal benefits.

I declare my belief that it is not your duty to do anything that is not to your own interest. Whenever it is unquestionably your duty to do a thing, then it will benefit you to perform that duty.

Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

Men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive in what they do than the approbation of men, which is fame, namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself.

self-interest usually brings injustice with it.

Self-interest leads to honing your skills, the better to trade with.

From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.

I don't believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

I had always been taught that life was the other way around -- that you had to make sure you got what was coming to you . . .

It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.

The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

It's in my interest, in ours perhaps, or maybe the interests of the greater good, for me to smoke a joint, and calm down.

The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results.

Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.

Selfish interest is one of the most common obstructions to the advance of truth.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.