Frederic Bastiat Quotes

Man is essentially a selfish creature. The differences in the degree with which this developed are infinite.

I believe that people generally want to be what we call good. They want to cooperate with people. They don't want to steal; they don't want to cheat. But everybody has a price. Everybody has an incentive.

When . . . in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.

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

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

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away.

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

Every man has his own reason for every deed. Usually it is selfish.

Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease

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.

We're selfish to some degree, that's not a criticism and it doesn't mean that we are all narcissists. But in any situation our minds naturally evolve to what's in it for me? How does this affect me? Can this benefit me? Can this harm me? Then we might move on from that and have a more altruistic point of view about things but that's almost always our initial response.

We fail to reckon with the reality of human nature. By nature,we are egocentric. Our world revolves around us. None of us is totally altruistic.

All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the terms of it fair.

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.

Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.

The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.

People always should know better. People don't get - they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed.

For conservation to be successful it is necessary to take into consideration that it is a characteristic of man that he can only be relied upon to do anything consistently which is in his own interest.

The secret to happiness is short-term, stupid self-interest!

Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself.

People are just greedy animals, after all.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.