Self-Serving Actions Quotes

His military experiences have been confined to shooting a fleeing Spaniard in the back on the slopes of Kettle Hill in Cuba.... No other conspicuous American public man would behave with such squalid selfishness.

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.

Opportunism is self interest seeking with guile often involving subtle forms of deceit, especially calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse. This vastly complicates the problems of economic organisation. Plainly if it were not for opportunism all behaviour could be rule governed

Evil or manipulative people don't need a book, they just do it anyway.

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

I've done everything for the wrong reasons. All the good works people credit to me are nothing because I did them expecting God to repay me. I thought if I worked hard enough, God would have to give me what I wanted. The truth is I've never served the Lord at all. I was always serving myself.

Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions.

Out of bad motives good things often come.

Loving money at the expense of others is an abuse of power to get wealth.

The basis of all sin is selfishness.

Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or both parties to a marriage contract.

Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

It has never been recommended to confuse "loving" with "seeking to please"... ...Salome pleased Herod's guests; I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist... ...she certainly did not envelop him in her love.

Any act of injury done from self-interest, whether amounting to killing or not, is doubtless himsa.