Quotes About Selfish Motives

“As an artist, my talents are not mine alone to just keep. My creations have to touch lives, spread love and let my skills be used only in good things but should be selfless not through selfish motives. In this manner, I am giving the gift back to my Master Creator. - Elizabeth's Quotes”

— Elizabeth E. Castillo

“You need to put aside your own selfish motives and consider other people for a change.”

— Joe Schreiber

“Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire ... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.”

— Bernard Of Clairvaux

“If the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in economics textbooks, it would grind to a halt because we would be spending most of our time cheating, trying to catch the cheaters, and punishing the caught. The world works as it does only because people are not the totally self seeking agents that free-market economics believes them to be. We need to design an economic system that, while acknowledging that people are often selfish, exploits other human motives to the full and gets the best out of people. The likelihood is that, if we assume the worst about people, we will get the worst out of them.”

— Ha-Joon Chang

“People don't like to think of themselves as sinful. They don't want to believe that they are selfish, evil people who would act much worse if unrestrained by society ... Because they believe they act from pure motives, many people live by their own moral code and can always justify their behavior. When that strategy fails they can always think of someone worse than themselves.”

— Douglas Beaumont

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“Gods tend to be selfish. Even when they're helpful, they always have their own motives. That's why you have to be careful about trusting them.”

— Rick Riordan

“On the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology.”

— Arthur Koestler

“War seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives.”

— Immanuel Kant

“The market system makes self interest into something thoroughly virtuous.' This is the extraordinary feature of markets: just as they can turn many individually irrational individuals into a collectively rational outcome, so they can turn many individually selfish motives into a collectively kind result.”

— Matt Ridley

“If efforts to do social work are couched in selfish motives, then they will die a premature death. Why would my efforts get politicised? I have values I inherited from my father. He helped many. Anyone, even a postman knocking on our door would get a glass of water and some sweets.”

— Sachin Tendulkar

“I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.”

— Charles Dudley Warner

“Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.”

— Janos Kadar

“That brought the smile back to the old woman's face. "This one at least is honest," she announced, "but you, ser  ...  I have known a dozen Westerosi knights and a thousand adventurers of the same ilk, but none so pure as you would paint yourself. Men are beasts, selfish and brutal. However gentle the words, there are always darker motives underneath. I do not trust you, ser.”

— George R.R. Martin

“Men are beasts, selfish and brutal. However gentle the words, there are always darker motives underneath.”

— George R.R. Martin

“The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives-altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter.”

— Richard J. Foster

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”

— George Orwell

“When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger would be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a speculation
no, no
it is that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a villain
otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“We will be judged according to the secret motives and the character of our work. If we have done our work for selfish motives or personal gain, even if the results looked noble to our friends and family, God knows our hearts.”

— Billy Graham

“Single mothers have as much to teach their children as married mothers and as much love to share
maybe more. Yet their motives are often labeled selfish and single-minded
never mind all the babies brought into the world to snag husbands, "save" faltering marriages or produce heirs.”

— Anne Cassidy

“If we don't have a clear sense of our identity and purpose, we are much more vulnerable to Lucifer. He of course knows this and accordingly attempts to blur our vision. He lies. He shades and obliterates truth. He makes evil look good and good look unenlightened and unsophisticated. Make no mistake about it: Lucifer will do anything to derail, disappoint, dishearten, discourage, and deceive us-and particularly those who have made and are seeking to keep sacred covenants. His motives are entirely self-centered, selfish, destructive, and evil.”

— Sheri L. Dew

“If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.”

— Mother Teresa

“The crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.”

— Arthur Koestler

“The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the
selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the
unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

“A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Meditation without selfless giving is not enough. You may go into very high states of consciousness but the rough edges will still be there - there may be lots of selfish motives lurking within the self - that you don't see.”

— Frederick Lenz

“Capitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

“Be careful of selfish motives. You can mistake them for principles and end up dying for them.”

— Robert Breault

“The trouble with selfish motives is that they harden into principles, and you end up sending your kids to war for them.”

— Robert Breault